Supervisors OK Review of Landfill Sites : Sprinkling of North County Residents Turn Out to Protest All Three

Despite opposition from a sprinkling of residents from across North County, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to authorize environmental reviews for three canyons being considered for a regional landfill.

The board voted 3 to 0, with Supervisors Brian Bilbray and Susan Golding absent, to spend up to $550,000 on geotechnical evaluations and environmental studies of the three sites.

After listening to about 90 minutes of often spirited testimony from residents living near the canyons, the board took its first steps toward the county’s goal of having a new landfill operating in North County by the mid-1990s.

Blue Canyon Top Choice

“Any site we select will have a great deal of resistance,” said Supervisor John MacDonald, the North County representative who has made the issue a priority. “In spite of that . . . there doesn’t seem to be any way to get around siting a landfill.”

A remote site near Warner Springs, known as Blue Canyon, has been selected as the top candidate. With enough room to handle North County’s trash for at least 45 years, the 1,000-acre parcel has the greatest capacity of any surveyed by county officials.

The second choice is a canyon north of Pala, and the third site is sandwiched between the communities of Fallbrook and Rainbow.

County solid-waste experts recommended that the board authorize the studies for all three sites so a variety of options can be maintained in the face of what they predict will be dogged opposition from nearby residents.

The supervisors got their first glimpse of those foes at Tuesday’s hearing. Armed with everything from petitions to a satellite photograph, the opponents pleaded with the board to abandon consideration of the sites near their homes.

Residents near Blue Canyon suggested that a dump there would cause dust problems during high winds and wide-ranging contamination of the vast ground-water basin that spreads west from the chaparral-strewn parcel.

Concerned About Runoff

Tom Wilson, an official with the Vista Irrigation District, said the agency’s board is concerned that polluted runoff from a dump in the canyon could foul surface streams flowing into Lake Henshaw, a major source of water for the North County.

Jerry Boislair, chairman of the Pala band of Mission Indians, expressed staunch opposition to the site proposed near Pala, warning that he is prepared to fight “for the rest of my life” on behalf of “people long dead and those yet born.”

Fallbrook residents complained of the potential environmental effects if a dump is allowed in a canyon near their homes. Camp Pendleton officials are also upset about the idea of a dump near Fallbrook, suggesting that ground-water pollution could spread to the base, which relies exclusively on water pumped from the aquifer.

County officials say a new landfill is vitally needed in North County to take up the slack when the San Marcos dump, one of two now operating in the region, shuts down in 1991. Although officials say expansion of the San Marcos dump is feasible, opponents have already begun to line up.

A new dump will not be in operation by 1991, but officials hope to have a network of three to eight transfer stations, enclosed warehouse-like facilities where trash from local trucks is pooled, then shifted to big rigs that haul it to dumps in the southern part of the county or Riverside County.

Once a new North County dump begins operation, the transfer stations would act as repositories for it.