Scholl Canyon Landfill expansion not up for immediate consideration, Glendale city manager says

The environmental review for possible expansion of Scholl Canyon Landfill likely won’t head to the Glendale City Council for consideration until this summer or fall. Even if council members vote in favor of enlarging the site, getting the effort off the ground could be years down the road, according to city officials.

City Manager Scott Ochoa made the announcement regarding the review during a council meeting on Tuesday in front of more than 25 concerned residents who live near the landfill and are worried about potential harmful negative effects the expansion may produce.

Though some miscommunication is likely traced to comments by Ochoa during a visit to the landfill last fall, some residents thought the environmental review would be up for consideration by the council by the end of this month, said city spokesman Tom Lorenz.

However, Ochoa told them that would not be the case.

The draft environmental-impact report was released almost two years ago and went through several rounds of public comments. City staffers are still in the process of responding to those 160 comments, Ochoa said.

The 535-acre landfill opened in 1961 and, at its peak, it received about 1,400 tons of trash daily.

If that peak amount was trucked in every day currently, capacity would be met by 2021, according to local utility officials. However, the influx has fallen as low as 700 tons a day in recent years, meaning the landfill’s life span could last through the early 2030s, officials said.

Steve Zurn, general manager of Glendale Water & Power, said expanding the landfill is just one of the options — including future waste-reduction technologies — the city may have on the table to deal with its own waste issues in the coming decades.

Officials have stressed that despite the environmental-review process, there are no plans for expansion.

“We aren’t in a hurry. We’ve been up front and open about this all the way,” Zurn said.

Two expansion options are outlined in the environmental review. One involves increasing the landfill’s height by 12%, while the other, which includes the height increase, would cut into 9 acres of hillside.

The first option would increase the landfill’s life span by 13 years, and the second would add 19 years.

Residents at the meeting carried signs protesting the landfill’s expansion. Most of them live in either Glenoaks Canyon near the landfill or across the city border in neighboring Eagle Rock.

While the environmental review will not be considered this month, the residents still took the opportunity to speak out against a possible expansion.

Some said the expansion issue was being driven by revenue because the landfill generates $5.5 million for taking trash from neighboring communities like Pasadena.

“Increasing the size of this landfill is going to put more pollutants in the air, more pollutants in the water,” said Glendale resident Owen Lewis. “The issue is whether [the council] is concerned about the money or health and welfare of its residents.”

Ochoa denied that money was the catalyst.

The draft environmental review states that some impacts would be significant and unavoidable, but also lists a series of methods to mitigate them.

Ochoa said another issue prolonging the effort is that officials are looking into ways to get rid of waste instead of just burying it in the landfill.

However, most of those technologies have yet to be made legal in California. One of them allowed in the state is anaerobic digestion, which breaks down organics such as green waste.

The city has gone so far as to solicit bids from companies that can implement the technology, but there just isn’t room for it at Scholl Canyon Landfill, Ochoa said.

“We need something scalable, something we can start small with and, if it’s very successful, we can ramp up in a linear fashion,” he said.

Talks with those companies will continue, Ochoa said, adding that he’s certain more technologies to reduce landfill waste will be developed over the next 20 years.

Even if the environmental impact review is adopted by the City Council, Glendale would have to head to Sacramento to get a permit from the state in order to move forward with the expansion — a process that, in itself, could take years, Zurn said.

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Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com

Twitter: @ArinMikailian