Environment

Proposed Gregory Canyon Landfill Digs Itself Out Of A Hole

By Alison St John / Reporter, Alison St John / Reporter

Published May 1, 2015 at 2:46 PM PDT

This story was published more than 9 years ago.

The proposal to build a new landfill in Gregory Canyon in North County appears to have come back to life.

The developer says new investors are backing the project and the company is already preparing to reapply for permits that expired for lack of payment. The original group of investors declared bankruptcy last year, but the company has since restructured its debt with the help of a private equity company, Sovereign Capital Management Group.

Nancy Chase, spokeswoman for the developer, said there will always be a need for new landfills.

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“There’s still a million tons of North County waste still going every place but North County," she said. “It’s more environmentally damaging to schlep trash hundreds of miles away.“

Opponents like Shasta Gaughen with the neighboring Pala Band of Mission Indians say any landfill is likely to leak eventually, no matter how state-of-the-art the installed liner may be.

Gaughen said that after 20 years and $60 million, it’s surprising investors keep trying to get permission to build a new landfill.

“It’s still financially not a good idea,” she said. “It’s still environmentally not a good idea, and we still don’t need a new landfill, considering the environment regulations for recycling in California. They’ve been becoming obsolete for a long time. It’s sort of like buying a Model T when you could be buying a Tesla.”

The project got public support from two initiatives 10 years apart in 1994 and 2004.

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However, it has several opponents.

The city of Oceanside, for example, has invested millions in recycling ground water, which is in the watershed of the San Luis Rey river that runs past the foot of the proposed landfill site.

The newly restructured company has started working with agencies like the county to re-file permit applications, Chase said. One of the most difficult permits to obtain is from the Army Corps of Engineers, she said.

“That’s not quite going back to the beginning, but it’s kind of going back to the middle,” Chase said.

The project still has not passed muster with the San Diego County Water Authority, which has a major pipeline running nearby.

Chase said the new investors are closer to the project because they are locally based, unlike the old investors, who were from the East Coast.

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Environment North County

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.

Alison St John

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