SAN DIEGO - Government security contractor Blackwater Worldwide reaffirmed plans Wednesday to build a rural training camp, a day after residents recalled five town officials who endorsed the project involving the Moyock, N.C.-based company.

The company wants to build 11 firing ranges, a driving track and a helipad in a valley just north of Potrero, a hamlet of about 850 people in the desert mountains about 45 miles east of San Diego.

"Regardless of who's sitting in that seat, we are proceeding," said Brian Bonfiglio, a company vice president who is overseeing Blackwater West.

Final say on the project rests with the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which won't consider it until environmental impact reports are completed sometime in 2008.

Voters gave the boot to five members of the advisory planning board -- Gordon Hammers, Jerry Johnson, Mary Johnson, Janet Wright and Thell Fowler.

Many residents worry that the training camp would bring traffic, noise and pollution to Potrero, which is cut off from the coast by high mountains and miles of state wilderness.

Residents opposed to Blackwater's activities in Iraq have also raised objections. Company guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September, sparking congressional and now criminal investigations.

Bonfiglio said objections to Blackwater's other activities were irrelevant to the camp case.

He said the facility in Potrero would focus solely on training law enforcement officers, not contractors who work for the company in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Everyone who's tired of the war sees us as attached to that," he said.

Hammers, the panel's ousted chairman, said the decision to send Blackwater's preliminary proposal to the county last December was misconstrued.

He said the board's goal was to investigate what jobs and other perks Blackwater might bring.

"We chose to stay engaged," Hammers said. "Certain elements made it an anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war surrogate and sold that to the community."