Trash-Burning Site Condemnation OKd

The city’s plans to build a $235-million trash incinerator in South-Central Los Angeles gained speed Friday when the City Council approved condemnation proceedings to hasten acquisition of a site.

Officials say the project, to be called the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery (LANCER) facility, will be jeopardized if the property is not obtained by the end of this month. But negotiations with the owners to purchase the land recently broke down.

Quick action was necessary, city officials said, because Congress is considering changes in tax laws that could make it more difficult for city governments to finance major projects like the incinerator.

13-Acre Site

City plans call for construction on 13 acres near Alameda and 41st streets of a plant to burn all the household refuse collected in an area from Hollywood through the Central City. Steam created by the burning will spin turbines to generate electricity, but the main purpose of the project is to reduce the need for municipal landfills.

The South-Central facility is projected as the first of three waste-to-energy plants in the city. The council has given its approval to begin studying sites in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside.

Elsewhere, such municipal incinerators have encountered stubborn public opposition and political hurdles. But here, despite a brief protest Friday by residents who live nearby, city officials consider the calendar their most formidable obstacle.

$10 Million Committed

The city has already committed about $10 million to studies and to acquiring the land. Officials intend to finance the bulk of the project by selling tax-exempt industrial development bonds.

Those bonds need to be issued before the end of the year to ensure that they qualify for preferable treatment under current tax laws.

However, the city must legally secure its hold on the proposed site before the bonds can be sold. Thus attorneys will go into Superior Court next week seeking to condemn the property.

The city had been paying some of the site’s owners $13,000 a month while negotiating to buy the property. But negotiations recently broke off in a disagreement over price, according to the project manager, Michael Miller of the city’s Sanitation Bureau.

Attorneys for the major owner of the site, Alameda-Barbara Development Co., could not be reached Friday for comment.

Industrial Property

The site is surrounded on three sides by either industrial property or vacant buildings. But across Long Beach Avenue and some railroad tracks is a residential area where the homeowners seem unhappy about the prospect of trash trucks coming and going all day and a 250-foot smokestack looming above.

About 280 people attended community meetings sponsored by the city this fall, and about a dozen who meet every week at a neighborhood library came to the City Council meeting on Friday to testify against the project.

“I feel like I’m Jack in the beanstalk fighting a giant,” Lois Medlock said. “I know that we don’t want it in the community.”