State Denial Threatens Proposed Long Beach Trash-to-Energy Plant

The trouble is trash, or, more specifically, what to do with it.

Back in 1979, officials in Long Beach proposed building a trash-to-energy plant that would burn 600 tons of garbage produced by city residents each day. As a bonus, the plant would generate enough electricity for 18,000 homes.

While a similar facility planned in nearby Compton was sunk by community protest, civic groups and environmentalists welcomed the proposed Long Beach plant--called the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility--as a way to reduce the flood of garbage into area landfills.

Everything seemed ready to go: City officials planned this month to seek a builder and were preparing to sell bonds to finance the project, which was to be operating in 1988.

Then the trash hit the fan.

State Refuses Approval

Last week, the state Waste Management Board refused to grant final approval for the plant, a ruling that is expected to delay construction for months while adding millions of dollars to the facility’s $66-million price tag. And if the worst fears of Long Beach officials are realized, the decision could kill the project.

The heart of the problem is a three-way tussle among the state, county officials and the City of Los Angeles.

Although members of the state waste board say the plant is a good idea, they have refused to approve it because the County of Los Angeles has failed to update its waste management plan. State law requires California counties to update the plans every three years, but Los Angeles County has not submitted one since 1977. No plan, no project.

“What we have is a situation where the state Waste Management Board is holding the plant hostage,” said Bill Davis, manager of Long Beach’s solid waste program. “Our project has become a target of opportunity for them. They’re using it to get the county to produce a waste management plan.”

In February, the state waste board voted to ask Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp to file lawsuits against Los Angeles County and nine other counties that have not updated their waste management plans.

Board’s Position

Sherman Roodzant, chairman of the state Waste Management Board, said the county has had more than enough time to approve and submit its waste plan. In the meantime, the board cannot legally approve projects in a county that does not have such a plan, Roodzant said.

“I don’t know what else we can do,” Roodzant said. “But I don’t think the county is going to drag its feet for more than a few months under the present circumstances.”

But county officials and the City of Los Angeles are caught in a bureaucratic tug of war over the plan, which is a blueprint for the management of waste in the Los Angeles area over the next decade.

The county wants two canyons in the city of Los Angeles included in the mangement plan as future sites for landfills. Those two sites, Rustic-Sullivan and Mission canyons, are needed so Los Angeles will have adequate landfill space to handle the mountain of garbage produced by the city’s residents, county officials maintain.

Neighbors Opposed Landfill

But Los Angeles officials have flatly refused to let the canyons, both in the San Fernando Valley, be used as landfills. Mission Canyon, in particular, has long been an issue. Residents living on the slopes above the canyon, which served as a dump between 1959 and 1965, successfully battled attempts in recent years to have the area reopened as a landfill.

“The exclusion of Mission Canyon and Rustic-Sullivan would cause a critical shortage of landfill space in the county,” said Dennis Morefield, a spokesman for county Supervisor Deane Dana. “The county’s concern is that if you go ahead and submit the waste management plan without those two canyons you may find yourself short a loaf down the road.”

Bill Tidemanson, director of the county Public Works Department, said it will probably be about six months before the county can submit its waste management plan to the state. Negotiations between the county and Los Angeles over the fate of the two canyons are continuing, he said.

“I think everyone wants to see (the project) proceed,” Tidemanson said. “But at this moment, it’s up in the air, I guess.”

A six-month delay would add about $2 million in costs to the Long Beach project because of inflation and other factors, said Davis, Long Beach’s solid waste program manager.

Contract Threatened

In addition, a delay could push the construction schedule so far back that it would jeopardize a contract the city signed with Southern California Edison Co. to buy electricity from the plant, Davis said. The contract requires that the plant begin operation by 1988.

But Long Beach officials have launched their own offensive. On Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to give City Manager John Dever carte blanche to pursue every available avenue to rectify the situation.

“We’re taking a look at our options,” Dever said. “The facts are that right now the project is being used as a tool in the fight between the county and the City of Los Angeles.”

May Attempt Compromise

Dever said Long Beach may try to work with the state Legislature or the governor’s office to hammer out a compromise. On Wednesday, Dever traveled to Sacramento to begin negotiations. In addition, the city attorney’s office is studying what legal actions could be taken.

Help from state officials may already have come. State Sen. Ralph Dills (D-Gardena) on Tuesday blocked the confirmation of Roodzant and two others appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to the state Waste Mangement Board in June, 1984. Under state law, the three must be confirmed within a year of appointment or they are out of a job.

State Sen. Robert Beverly (R-Manhattan Beach), who backed Dills’ action, said the move was designed to persuade the waste board to give final approval to the Long Beach trash-to-energy plant.

“We want them to understand the seriousness of this situation,” Beverly said. “This gets their attention.”

Long Beach officials note that the state Waste Management Board gave its blessing in August, 1984, to a trash-to-energy plant in Commerce and question why the Long Beach project does not receive similar treatment.

But Roodzant said the board approved the Commerce plant before its February decision to block permits for counties that had not submitted updated waste plans and to ask the attorney general to file lawsuits.

Before that, Roodzant said, several counties that had not filed updated plans--including Los Angeles--were given extensions by the state waste board and had landfills or other projects approved. But the board was advised by its legal counsel in February that it did not have the authority to grant extensions, Roodzant said.

If built, the plant would be the largest trash-to-energy facility in Southern California, handling most of Long Beach’s garbage with room for another 300 tons of refuse each day from other sources. Rubbish that does not burn would be sifted out and taken to landfills.

While the cost of transporting garbage to distant landfills has caused refuse rates to rise, operation of the trash-to-energy plant would stabilize collection costs, supporters of the plant say.

“Eventually, we could get to a situation where we’re trucking all our garbage out to the desert,” Davis said. But with the plant, “we’d be able to avoid that.”

Trash as Fuel

Electricity would be generated much as it is in a traditional power plant, except that the fuel would be trash. Burning garbage would heat steam boilers; the steam, in turn, would power a turbine to generate electricity.

The city already has purchased a 17-acre site for the facility on Terminal Island, using $6.8 million in redevelopment funds. Currently, Long Beach hauls refuse to the Puente Hills Landfill near Whittier or to a trash transfer station in Wilmington.

The trash-to-energy project has won support from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Alamitos Bay Beach Preservation Assn. and other environmental groups.

Several mechanisms to filter smoke produced by the burning trash would be included as part of the plant. Davis said the facility would produce about as much air pollution each day as the cars on a mile-long section of the Santa Monica Freeway.