Gregory Canyon landfill effort inches
along
FALLBROOK ---- The Gregory Canyon landfill project took
another step forward recently when an agency governing water quality in the
region deemed as complete the landfill's application for a major permit.
In a letter dated March 1, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board
told Gregory Canyon Ltd. owner Richard Chase that his application for a
water-quality permit was ready to be ruled upon.
The board will consider
the extent to which the dump would affect local water sources and will either
issue or deny the permit. A decision is expected in July, officials said.
While the announcement
did not amount to permit approval, a spokesman for Gregory Canyon Ltd. called
it "an important milestone" after more than five years of revising
the application to the board. The application was at first deemed inadequate
and was returned on May 11,1999.
Gregory Canyon spokesman Scott Maloni
said Friday that the company "looks forward to the Water Quality Control
Board hearing."
He declined to elaborate and Chase could not be reached
for comment.
Proposed for 1,700 acres three miles west of Interstate 15
off Highway 76, the landfill would accommodate 1 million tons of solid waste
annually for 30 years.
The water-quality permit, one of several still needed to
begin construction of the $60 million landfill, would address the dump's
proximity to the San Luis Rey River, as well as
technical aspects such as the liner intended to keep the solid waste from
reaching the soil.
Bill Hutton, a permitting lawyer for Gregory Canyon Ltd.,
said in a December interview that the five-layer liner system "vastly
exceeds both the federal and state standards" for containing harmful
substances that could leak from the dump into the groundwater.
A lawyer representing RiverWatch,
a group dedicated to protecting the San Luis Rey
River, said Friday that he hopes the water-quality board will deny the
application.
"(Gregory Canyon Ltd.) has really touted the idea
that this is the most advanced liner system known to mankind, but one has to
keep in mind that all liners eventually leak," DeLano
said. "I suppose a thicker liner or a more complex liner might take
longer, but they're all going to leak. The question is, what impact is it going
to have on the groundwater?"
DeLano is the lead attorney on a lawsuit filed in Superior Court last
fall by RiverWatch, the city of Oceanside, and the Pala Band of Mission Indians against the county's
Department of Environmental Health and Gregory Canyon Ltd.
The suit also personally names Gary Erbeck,
director of the San Diego Solid Waste Local Enforcement Agency, as a defendant.
In the complaint, DeLano and
lawyers for Pala and Oceanside claim that an analysis
performed by Gregory Canyon Ltd., and on which the county based its solid waste
permit approval, was flawed. Specifically, it states that the project's effects
on air pollution, traffic, noise, endangered species and nearby sacred American
Indian sites were understated in the report.
The first briefing in the lawsuit is scheduled for April
15 and the trial is scheduled to begin in late June. Two major permits from the
Air Pollution Control District and the Army Corps of Engineers, along with a
host of smaller permits, are still needed before the landfill can open.
Contact staff writer Tom Pfingsten
at (760) 731-5799 or tpfingsten@nctimes.com.