SANTA ANA : Recycling Plant Plan Worries Neighbors

Plans for a garbage recycling plant in the center of Santa Ana have drawn fire from residents who say it will bring noise, traffic and foul odors to their neighborhood.

City planners will hold a meeting tonight at Century High School, near the proposed site for CityCycle in the 1200 block of East St. Andrews Place, to hear neighbors’ concerns.

CityCycle, also called the Santa Ana Material Recovery Facility, would be the sixth waste recycling plant in the county.

“This is the time for us to say ‘Enough!’ ” said Latina activist Maria Rosa Ibarra at a recent community meeting. “Why don’t they put a dump north of 17th (Street)? They want to put it where we are.”

But representatives of Great Western Reclamation, the city’s waste hauler and proponent of the planned facility, say it would not be a dump.

“This would be a modern recycling center,” Great Western Vice President David Ross said. If approved, the $20-million recycling plant would bring about 300 jobs to the city and generate about $17.5 million in growth in its first four years, Ross said.

The plant, if set up at the vacant 15-acre Kerr Glass Co. site, will receive, process and transfer 3,800 tons of waste per day. Santa Ana produces about 1,800 tons of garbage daily, officials said.

Santa Ana could get about $750,000 a year in “host fees” for accepting waste from other cities once the facility is operational, Ross said.

But some residents say they are alarmed about the prospect of increased traffic, noise from rumbling garbage trucks and the stench of trash.

“With those trucks going up and down the street, there’s a potential for danger for the children in the area,” said Sean Mill, a former City Council candidate who adamantly opposes the project. About 4,500 children and youths attend nearby Madison and Edison elementary schools and Century High.

At a recent community meeting at Madison elementary, resident Yolanda Perez said: “They say it’s going to be very nice . . . but its going to bring more rodents, more roaches, more flies and more traffic in our community.”

Since June, when Great Western’s contract went into effect, about a third of Santa Ana’s trash has been taken to recycling plants in Irvine, Stanton and Anaheim, where workers sort out bottles and cans before the remaining garbage is trucked to landfills. The contract requires that the program be expanded citywide by 1994.

If approved, CityCycle may open by July, 1994, in time to accept garbage from all 95 of Santa Ana’s garbage routes for sorting and recycling.

State law requires all cities to reduce their waste going to landfills by 25% by 1995 and by 50% by the year 2000.