L.A. Could Divert Trash From Dump

The Los Angeles City Council may have found a solution to the politically unpopular Sunshine Canyon Landfill above Granada Hills -- spend more money to take some of its trash elsewhere.

Under a plan that could be voted on as early as Friday, the council may peel away some of the 940,000 tons of garbage it brings to Sunshine each year and dump it at two other distant sites. City sanitation officials have said the scenario would cost millions more each year and increase truck traffic, smog and soot in already polluted regions.

But such a move, officials said, would not close the privately owned Sunshine Canyon, as neighbors have sought for years to do. The landfill has enough capacity to remain open until sometime in the 2020s and is permitted to take trash from any customer, whether the city of L.A. or another municipality.

Those facts have set the stage for a contentious meeting Friday. Some council members -- notably Greig Smith, whose district includes the landfill, which has long been a political hot potato -- will contend that something must be done because the community has endured the dump for decades.

“The question is do we the city want to contribute to what’s going on at Sunshine?” Smith told the council’s environmental panel on Wednesday. “What’s going on there is not good for Los Angeles.”

Others, however, are prepared to argue that dumping Los Angeles’ trash in other cities would be a perverse form of environmental justice.

“It would be a political gesture and an empty one,” Councilman Ed Reyes said. “The landfill is still there, and the impact from the landfill is still there. Why expend precious public dollars on something that means nothing?”

The council has until the end of the month to extend its contract with the Sunshine Canyon landfill for five more years. If it doesn’t exercise the option, the city must find a new place to take its trash after July 1.

Three times in the last two weeks council panels have refused to endorse extending the contract while also not taking any position on an alternative.

Traditionally, council members from the Valley are loath to be seen as pro-Sunshine Canyon, which some activists and members of the media have used as a metaphor for City Hall “dumping” on the Valley.

Sunshine Canyon is at the far northern end of the Valley, near the intersection of the 5 and 14 freeways.

The landfill has been in operation since the late 1950s. A high ridge shields Granada Hills from the dump.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wanted the city to extend the contract last summer, and after the council balked, he won a six-month extension from the dump’s owner for the city to make a final decision.

In the midst of compiling his first city budget, the mayor has lately suggested that he must fix an expected $245-million gap between revenue and expenditures in the coming fiscal year. He also wants to set aside money for the many campaign promises he made, such as hiring more police officers.

Another potential budget issue arose Wednesday when several hundred members of the Engineers and Architects Assn. briefly interrupted a council meeting to demand a pay hike.

On Wednesday, Villaraigosa spokesman Joe Ramallo would not say which alternative the mayor prefers but hinted at the consequences of exiting the Sunshine Canyon deal.

“There are costs associated with the alternatives we would need to determine how to pay for,” Ramallo said.

Sources close to the council said the mayor’s office has eased its lobbying on the issue in recent days, perhaps an indication that Villaraigosa has the votes he needs to extend the Sunshine Canyon contract.

Currently on the table are three options:

One would take all the trash to Sunshine Canyon, at a cost of $29 million each year; another would divide trash between Sunshine and a dump in Riverside County for $44 million; a third would split trash between Riverside County and another landfill in Avenal, in the San Joaquin Valley, for $59.2 million.

Smith said Wednesday that he was working on a fourth option that involves the three landfills and would cost a few million more dollars than taking all the trash to Sunshine.

The council is scheduled to vote on the Sunshine contract Friday, and could also vote on Smith’s proposal.

The Corona dump is about 49 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, and the landfill in Avenal is about 190 miles north of the city.

A city sanitation report found that diverting trash would put more trucks on the road for longer periods.

As a result, those trucks would boost the amount of nitrous oxide -- a key ingredient of smog -- and particulate matter in the air.

Last summer, Smith released a document called “Renew LA” that outlines an alternative to burying trash. In addition to ramping up recycling to keep trash out of the dump, Smith proposes building facilities across the city that would convert garbage to sources of energy through several methods that are relatively common in Europe and Asia.

The council has endorsed parts of the plan, and city officials believe many of those technologies hold promise, although questions remain about scale, expense and whether communities in L.A. would tolerate a plant -- even one that was safe and unobtrusive. The plan, Smith estimates, would take 20 years to implement.