Encinitas Joins Ranks of Trash Plant Foes

A new round of public hearings to approve a controversial trash-to-energy plant in San Marcos went into its second night Thursday, with supporters invoking the U.S. Constitution and critics linking the project to cancer.

While there was relatively little new information on the merits and liabilities of the electricity-generating incinerator, a new city that wasn’t around when the plant was initially approved 2 1/2 years ago has now joined the fracas, saying the project should be studied further.

“There are simply too many unanswered questions, too much incomplete documentation, too many potential impacts to Encinitas and its residents which have not been addressed,” said Marjorie Gaines, the mayor of the year-old city of Encinitas.

She harshly criticized the San Marcos City Council for considering adopting an environmental impact report (EIR) that did not even acknowledge the existence of her city, whose sphere of influence abuts the county landfill where the trash-to-energy plant would be constructed.

She specifically noted that there was no mention in the EIR of Copper Creek, which winds through the landfill site, near the proposed trash plant, and serves as a natural habitat downstream in the Olivenhain Valley and ultimately feeds into the San Elijo lagoon.

“The EIR was written as if the city of Encinitas did not exist,” Gaines complained.

Voided by State Court

The city initially authorized the construction of the plant in January, 1985, but that approval was voided by a state appellate court. The court ruled that the city faulted in not ordering an environmental impact report on the general plan amendment, which paved the way for the zoning of the trash plant.

For that reason, the developer, North County Resource Recovery Associates, was required to go before the City Council a second time for approval to build the $217-million project.

There seems little doubt the San Marcos City Council will once again vote 4 to 1 to approve the project, given the tone of the questions asked by council members Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Indeed, the council members seemed so strong in their support or opposition of the plant that they seemed to be play-acting in listening to the testimony.

Questions were carefully and deliberately worded to elicit the answers they seemed to want to hear to support their position, and none of the council members seemed to hold a neutral position.

Councilwoman Pia Harris, who has steadfastly opposed the plant, asked questions challenging the proponents’ claims that the plant would not pose a significant health risk, while the four other council members asked questions that elicited answers strongly indicating that landfills were more dangerous to the public health than the trash plant.

The debate over the kinds of chemicals that will be emitted from a 300-foot-high smokestack was muddy, with conflicting testimony as to the type and amount of pollution to be expected.

At one point Wednesday night, Mayor Lee Thibadeau blurted out: “We don’t know what’s going to be produced out of that plant,” to which critics of the project, sitting in the audience, answered, “Exactly.”

Remarked Gaines at one point, noting that there are Olivenhain residents of Encinitas living closer to the project than most of San Marcos’ citizenry: “If you’re so convinced there is no harm (in the plant), why didn’t you put it right in the middle of San Marcos? I’d feel a lot more comfortable then, because then I’d feel you had a real measure of confidence in what you’re doing.”

Sees Landfill Expanding

She argued that if the trash plant is approved, it would virtually guarantee the expansion of the landfill, located on Questhaven Road about 1 1/2 miles east of Rancho Santa Fe Road on the southern edge of San Marcos, and therefore generate additional traffic in the region for years to come.

“The existing San Marcos landfill will run out of capacity in 1991 and the location of a future landfill for North County is unresolved,” Gaines said. “It makes no sense to consider the trash-to-energy plant before the future location of a regional landfill is decided because the two go hand in hand.

“In fact, if you approve the trash-to-energy plant where it is proposed, it would virtually compel a decision (by the county) to expand the San Marcos landfill rather than (allowing the county to) select a more appropriate location in the region.”

She called on the San Marcos City Council to delay its decision for six months “to enable us to complete further studies and analyses which we believe are necessary.”

“As a neighboring city, we would like to work with your city to ensure that a full, complete and unbiased analysis which this experimental project deserves is completed. I’m sure you all agree that cities owe it to their residents to go the extra mile to ensure their citizenry that this experimental project will not harm them. Unfortunately, at the present time an objective view of the documentation prepared on this project indicates such a conclusion cannot be drawn.”

Mayor Claude E. (Bud) Lewis of neighboring Carlsbad said the Carlsbad council was also unanimously opposed to the project because of concerns over health risks and because of the new traffic the project would generate on Carlsbad streets.

He asked that the NCRRA pay an impact fee to Carlsbad of $22 for every truck headed to the trash plant by way of Carlsbad streets, that Rancho Santa Fe Road be widened to four lanes between Questhaven Road and La Costa Avenue in Carlsbad, and that if residual ash from the boiler operation is to be transported to another landfill, it not be taken through Carlsbad.

“We’d like that stuff to stay out of Carlsbad as much as possible,” Lewis said.

Biochemist Sees a Risk

Among the handful of speakers opposing the trash plant was Laurence Brunton, a biochemist at UC San Diego, who said that until questions are resolved about the tolerable level of emissions of dioxins, a suspected carcinogen to humans, the plant might prove to be a risk to the region.

“Unless we act with considerable restraint in polluting the environment, we will often wrongly do experiments on ourselves and conclude a generation too late that a particular chemical is toxic to humans. In the instance of trash burning, we have the opportunity to consider the potential for future harm before we do any such drastic experiment,” he said.

“Is this (trash plant) a risk we want to take?” asked Harris.

“No, certainly not,” Brunton said.

Attorney Gerald Dawson put the council on notice Thursday night that he would file an inverse condemnation lawsuit against the city if it approves the trash plant. Dawson’s client intends to develop 68 $400,000 homes 200 feet south of the plant site.

Dawson said the plant would destroy the value of his client’s property and criticized the EIR for failing to reveal the existence of black-tailed gnat catchers on the project site, because another EIR detected that the animal is present on his clients’ land.

Another speaker, Carol Asher, criticized the council for seemingly favoring a company from Boston “while you don’t seem to be listening to those of us who live in San Marcos.”

Jim Eubanks, who developed a complex of restaurants in San Marcos, said he was concerned about the image the trash plant would give San Marcos. “When you are driving to Palm Springs, you don’t think of stopping to eat in Colton,” the site of a concrete manufacturing plant, he said.

Several speakers noted that Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley two weeks ago vetoed the construction of a mass-burning trash incinerator in his city because of health-risk concerns.

Donald Wakefield, who identified himself as a risk assessment engineer and a La Costa resident, said: “Hazardous waste will illegally find itself into the plant and into the fire . . . We’re going to take everything under the sun, burn it and try to measure it? And we don’t know what will happen to the interaction of the chemicals that leave the stack.”

But land-use attorney Wes Peltzer, testifying on behalf of NCRRA, countered, “The temperature of the boiler will cause thermal destruction of all hazardous waste which enters the boiler, in accordance with EPA standards.”

In contrast, he said, it will be virtually impossible to keep hazardous waste from being buried in the landfill, “and the ultimate impact of these hazardous wastes will remain in the landfill as a ticking time bomb to be dealt with by future generations.”

Model of Plant Safety

And other consultants to NCRRA said the conditions required of the developer in order to run the plant safely have made it a model from which other plants in the country might be judged.

NCRRA managing director Richard Chase said the trash plant was clearly the preferred alternative over landfills, given the environmental controls the city will maintain over the plant and the economic benefits the city will accrue from the plant’s operation.

“There are no significant health risks from our project, and there are unknown, unquantified and uncontrolled health risks from the continuation and expansion of the landfill,” Chase said.

He noted that a citywide vote will be held in San Marcos on Sept. 15 for the final approval of the trash plant, and observed that 200 years ago on that date the U.S. Constitution was adopted in Philadelphia.

To that point, he quoted James Madison as having noted a painting of a sun that hung in the room where the document was being signed, and that it was ambiguous to some whether the sun was setting or rising.

Benjamin Franklin concluded, given the adoption of the Constitution, that the sun was rising.

Chase suggested that voters will make a similar finding on Sept. 15 by voting in favor of the trash plant.

“The sun is going to set on (landfills) as a so-called solution, and the sun is going to rise on a solution that says we are going to recycle, and we are going to recover energy and we’re going to do it in an economically and environmentally sound manner and save these precious resources that would otherwise be destroyed forever,” he said, to a mixed reaction from the audience.

The City Council is expected to make its formal ruling Monday night. The meeting will begin at 6:30.