Residents Oppose Trash Facility

Several Pomona residents said that a private company’s proposal to build a trash-sorting facility in the city really stinks.

Five years and several thousand dollars in the planning, a “material recovery facility” may go up in the Phillips Ranch area if the council votes Monday to approve the project’s final environmental impact report. The report includes an unsigned recommendation from the city Planning Commission to the City Council, indicating that the commission advised the council to approve the report.

But the commission did not approve the report, said Commissioner Ed Tessier.

“The motion that was approved by the Planning Commission simply found the [negative environmental impact] mitigations inadequate,” he said.

Neither he nor Betsy Lindsay, a private consultant who drafted the report for the city, could explain the discrepancy.

Angry residents think they have an answer.

“We’ve been lied to every step of the way,” said Betty Burg, a vocal activist against the project.

At a council meeting this month that was supposed to end with a vote on the environmental report, residents spilled out the doors of City Hall, waiting to decry the proposal as a health hazard. Realizing that they were in for a long night, the council voted to put off the decision on the project until next week.

If the council votes in favor of the plan, a group of residents said Wednesday that they may start a recall campaign against the city officials.