L.A. Plans to Send Most Trash to Valley Area While Burners Are Built

Los Angeles sanitation officials Wednesday proposed to send most of the city’s household garbage to San Fernando Valley-area dumps for the next few years, until the city can build trash-burning plants, including one in the Valley.

The proposal requires City Council approval. But the recommendation calling for increased dumping in the Valley may be the only possible plan after Wednesday’s disclosure that BKK Landfill in West Covina has refused to accept any more trash from Los Angeles because of a political dispute.

The city is left with no choice but to take another 160 truckloads a day of trash to the San Fernando Valley landfills once the nearly full Toyon Canyon Landfill in Griffith Park closes later this month, said Sterling C. Buesch, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation.

Valley Councilmen Hal Bernson and Howard Finn had proposed that the additional trash be sent to the private BKK landfill. But county Supervisor Pete Schabarum said Wednesday that he pressured BKK to refuse to allow Los Angeles to dump more trash at the West Covina landfill, which is in Schabarum’s district. He said he was retaliating for the city’s continuing refusal to allow the county to dump trash at the now-closed Mission Canyon Landfill on Los Angeles’ Westside.

BKK officials could not be reached for comment.

Plan Through Year 2000

The proposals made Wednesday by the Bureau of Sanitation are contained in a plan for disposal of the city’s trash until the year 2000.

Essentially, the plan calls for the Valley to receive a lot more trash in the near future but a lot less later as a result of development of trash-disposal facilities in other parts of the city.

“That’s OK . . . as long as we get less later,” said Finn, who has constantly griped to his colleagues that his northeast Valley district gets more than its share of the city’s trash.

The Valley, excluding Toyon Canyon, receives 777,000 tons of household trash each year, slightly more than half of the 1.3 million tons generated in Los Angeles, according to the Bureau of Sanitation.

Under the bureau’s recommendations, the amount dumped in the Valley would climb to an estimated 1.3 million tons, out of 1.4 million tons generated citywide, in fiscal 1987-88.

The amount dumped in the Valley would drop to 668,000 tons, however, in fiscal 1990-91, out of a projected 1.5 million tons generated citywide. Only 382,000 tons would be dumped in the Valley in 1994-95, out of a projected 1.6. million tons generated, should the city go ahead with the bureau plan.

2 Valley-Area Landfills

The plan proposes that, when the Toyon Canyon Landfill closes, the city send another 160 truckloads of trash to the city’s Lopez Canyon Landfill in Lake View Terrace and to Browning Ferris Industries’ Sunshine Canyon Landfill above Granada Hills.

Toyon was scheduled to reach capacity Nov. 1, but the city now expects to keep it open until about the end of the month.

Sanitation officials said they also will seek county approval to dump more trash at the county-operated Calabasas Landfill and Scholl Canyon Landfill in Glendale, taking part of the burden off the Lopez and Sunshine canyons sites.

However, Buesch said, he “can’t be confident” of winning county approval for that plan in light of the city-county trash war.

The Bureau of Sanitation also proposed these measures to relieve the Valley of the burden of receiving most of the city’s trash:

A previously rejected proposal to open another landfill, nicknamed Toyon II, in a canyon near the existing landfill in Griffith Park. Unlike the earlier proposal, the Sanitation Department suggests using Toyon II only for the disposal of ash left from the city’s first trash-burning plant, scheduled to open in 1989 near downtown.

Opening a landfill at Metropolitan Canyon, near Mission Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains west of the Sepulveda Pass.

Construction of two more trash-burning plants--at undetermined sites in the Valley and on the Westside.

The plan is expected to run into opposition, especially from lawmakers whose districts outside the Valley would be required in a few years to take some of the city’s trash.

Buesch said the proposal grew from a directive from the council to spread the burden of trash disposal throughout the city.

Bernson said Wednesday that he is noncommittal on the proposal, “except for the fact that the Valley alone is not going to wind up taking all of the city’s refuse.” He said the plan is “better than what was originally proposed, which was to put it in Lopez and Sunshine, period. It is recognition of the fact that everybody has to share the load.”

The city’s trash crisis has been created in part by strong neighborhood opposition to new or expanded landfills. As a result, once Toyon closes, the city will be left with only one landfill that it owns, Lopez Canyon.

“If we have to take everything to Lopez, then we’ll run out of landfill capacity in five to seven years,” Buesch said.