Trash Truck Yard Thrown Out? : Neighborhoods: Historic San Juan Capistrano district, long plagued by a garbage hauler’s storage yard, may soon be rid of it if a proposed land swap goes through.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  As Orange County grew up around them, generations of homeowners in the Los Rios Historic District have fought a number of battles to preserve their unique oasis, where pepper trees grace the yards of 18th-Century adobes and age-old gardens surround clapboard cottages.

But every day, the sound of roaring engines and crashing dumpsters shatters the serenity of the streets and reminds residents of their 20-year effort to move a fleet of garbage trucks out of their neighborhood.

Los Rios residents may finally achieve their goal under terms of a proposed real estate deal announced this week by the Community Redevelopment Agency. The city would give the Solag Disposal Co. six acres of land along San Juan Creek in exchange for the company’s two-acre Los Rios property, where the firm stores its fleet of trucks and dumpsters.

But both residents and city officials are reluctant to declare victory because the plan faces many obstacles that could derail it or at least delay resolution for a year or two. For starters, residents who live near San Juan Creek are already mounting their opposition to the relocation plan.

“I’m hesitant to get excited,” said Gil Jones, an 11-year Los Rios Street resident and two-year member of the city Planning Commission. “It has been a lot of rhetoric, and I’m getting weary from the fight.”

Landowner Tom Trulis, who founded Solag in 1957 and moved it onto the Los Rios property in the late 1960s, said he is as anxious to leave as the residents are to see him go.

But, according to the deal, he cannot move until city officials provide either temporary or permanent public access to the new site, which is landlocked between the Santa Fe Railway tracks and San Juan Creek, near the southern city limit.

“We need to get out of there,” Trulis said. “It’s a residential area and not a good location for a truck yard. We can’t improve on it, and, besides that, it’s a historical site.”

Posing yet another obstacle, Dana Point officials said they object to tentative plans by San Juan Capistrano officials to gain access to the new Solag site by improving a nearby railroad crossing in Capistrano Beach.

Terms of the exchange call for the redevelopment agency to pay Trulis $1.05 million for the Los Rios site. The agency, in turn, would sell its creek-side lot to Trulis for $1 million, and also require Trulis to pay the first $450,000 of the bill for removing fuel tanks from the yard and bringing the soil up to environmentally safe standards, said Jeff Parker, assistant city manager.

Once the Solag site is cleaned up, city officials would implement a longstanding plan to build a historical park on the property, which has been documented in the city General Plan since the mid-1970s.

San Juan Capistrano officials have acknowledged that the plan is flawed due to the lack of access and potential impact to neighbors, but said the proposed new site is better than having trash trucks in the middle of an area listed on the National Register of Historic Places as one of the state’s oldest residential streets.

“The city has made a promise to the people in Los Rios, and we’ll keep our word,” said Mayor Gary L. Hausdorfer, referring to an August, 1989, agreement signed by Trulis and the council saying Solag would be moved by early 1991.

The best plan, Hausdorfer said, would be to unite the five South Orange County cities served by Solag’s fleet of 40 trucks, and share costs of maintaining a site for the business near a county-operated landfill off Ortega Highway. The idea has been rejected in private discussions with 5th District Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, the mayor added.

“It seems to me that it is unfair to ask one city to provide housing for trash trucks that serve an entire region,” Hausdorfer said. “I think it’s an embarrassment that we’ve had this burden for so long. Now, we’re just relocating the problem somewhere else in our city, instead of in a place where it won’t disturb anybody.”

Riley aide Christie McDaniel said allowing Solag to operate a private trash-hauling business on county property would set a precedent that could mean a flood of similar requests from other private haulers.

In light of the county’s stance, city officials are forging ahead with three options to accommodate truck traffic for Solag and for a municipal yard planned on an adjacent lot, Parker said.

They include installing a railroad crossing at the north end of Victoria Boulevard in Capistrano Beach, using an Orange County Flood Control District road reached by Coast Boulevard, near Doheny State Park, or waiting for the early 1990s completion of the Stonehill Drive extension between Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano.

Dana Point City Manager William O. Talley expressed concern about the wear and tear that heavy trucks would have on the older streets of Capistrano Beach.

More opposition has come from Capistrano Beach citizens and residents of two south San Juan Capistrano mobile home parks that back up to the proposed truck yard, the Villa San Juan Mobile Home Park and Capistrano Valley Mobile Estates. Like the residents of Los Rios, most of their worries center around noise and traffic.

“I have empathy for those folks,” Jones said. “And I’m very apprehensive about this whole thing because of their concerns. This project still has to go through the city approval process. “

Until they see Solag pulling up stakes for good, Los Rios residents have resigned themselves to the sights, sounds and smells of the trash-hauling business.

“When they unload empty dumpsters, it sounds like a combination of cannons and thunder,” said six-year resident Frances Perguson, whose unfenced back yard offers a view of a storage area filled with dozens of the tan, metal receptacles.

“But on a Sunday, you really notice how unnaturally quiet it is,” Perguson added. “And I always think, if they were gone, it would always be like this.”