Do we even need to build another landfill?

In a couple of weeks, the county of San Diego's Solid Waste Local Enforcement Agency will decide whether to grant a key permit for the proposed Gregory Canyon Landfill in North County, a 300-acre garbage dump that its proponents say will be the greenest landfill in the world.

The liner won't leak, the proponents promise, and the nearby earthquake faults pose no threat of unleashing millions of gallons of toxic leachate into the San Luis Rey River and the drinking water aquifers it feeds.

Of course, that's what you'd expect them to say. But they ignore the technological failures and natural disasters we've witnessed in recent months, first in the Gulf of Mexico and now in Japan.

It would be an enormous mistake for the county to ignore what can go wrong and approve this project. Back in the 1990s, the county's consultants rejected this exact location for a landfill because the site is on top of a drinking water aquifer, near an active earthquake fault, next to historical archaeological sites, within the San Luis Rey River's floodplain and in the middle of endangered species habitat. You could scarcely pick a worse spot for a garbage dump if you tried.

The landfill's severe environmental impacts have prompted the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the regional water board to scrutinize the project carefully and demand additional information about how the developer would mitigate these impacts.

And contrary to what some observers are saying, this controversy isn't about where the landfill should be built, but whether it needs to be built at all.

According to CalRecycle, the agency that regulates waste management in California, San Diego County has decreased its waste by 25 percent since 2005, partly because recycling rates are at all-time highs. At the same time, new technologies and techniques to manage trash more efficiently are being developed that will limit the need for landfills well into the future.

The bottom line is that finding yet another location to bury our garbage simply ignores the advances in how we dispose of our waste and whether the vast majority of it can be recycled through programs that provide good-paying, local jobs.

The landfill's proponents have sunk nearly 20 years and millions of dollars into this project and will do everything they can to save this money pit. However, the project was a bad idea when it was first suggested, and it is not needed now.

What we need is to continue adopting better trash management and recycling policies to allow existing landfills to work more efficiently, rather than facilitate the destruction and desecration of the Gregory Canyon site. Let's be smarter about how we manage our waste while protecting our sacred natural resources from permanent and unnecessary peril.

DAMON NAGAMI writes from Santa Monica on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council.