N.J. Firm Wins Trash-Burning Pact in South L.A.

The Los Angeles City Council Wednesday selected a New Jersey company to build and run a huge trash-burning facility in a poor section of South-Central Los Angeles, but warned that fears about toxic dioxin emissions could block final approval and threaten a city policy to also burn trash in more affluent areas.

Known as the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery (Lancer) project, the proposed plant is the first stage in a plan to gradually burn most of the city’s trash rather than bury it. Similar plants, which burn trash to generate electricity, are scheduled to be built on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

In choosing Ogden-Martin Corp. by a 12-1 vote, the council ended an unusually heavy lobbying campaign to win the 20-year contract, which could be worth $400 million once final details are negotiated. The decision upheld the conclusion of senior city department officials that Ogden-Martin had made a better offer than its competitor, Signal Environmental Systems of Hampton, N.H.

Both companies considered Los Angeles a prize contract and poured money into the competition. They hired the most expensive City Hall lobbyists, and right up to the vote Wednesday, Ogden-Martin lobbyist Arthur K. Snyder used his privilege as a longtime former councilman to enter restricted areas of the council chambers--where most lobbyists are prohibited--and speak privately with his former colleagues and their aides.

As a protest over the lobbying pressure, Councilman Ernani Bernardi cast the lone vote against Ogden-Martin despite being a proponent of trash burning. “It (lobbying) has been completely out of line,” Bernardi said in an interview Wednesday.

The project has chugged through the city bureaucracy during more than three years of study and preliminary decisions, with unanimous backing by the City Council. More than $3 million has been spent on the project, and the city has backed $235 million in bonds to finance the first Lancer plant.

But for the first time this week, some council members acknowledged the dioxin issue that has sparked controversy in other cities and states where burning has been scrutinized as an alternative to burying trash in landfill dumps.

Dioxins are byproducts of burning that have been found to be carcinogenic in animals and highly toxic to humans. They are carried aloft in small amounts in the exhaust of trash-burning plants, along with traces of toxic metals and large volumes of the ordinary air pollution that contributes to smog. The smog-producing gases float off into the air, while the metals and dioxins scatter and settle onto surrounding areas.

The federal EPA has concluded that dioxins pose no threat if a plant is properly operated, and the city’s environmental impact report on the Lancer plant dismisses dioxins as a minimal risk to the largely black and Latino residents of South-Central Los Angeles.

Temporary Ban in Sweden

But Sweden has imposed a temporary ban on new trash-burning plants because of studies suggesting that dioxins are endangering animals and nursing infants near existing plants there. In California, state air and health officials are urging that strict rules be adopted to control dioxin emissions.

Zev Yaroslavsky, whose Westside district is a possible site for the next trash-burning plant, was the first council member to raise the issue this week. When the selection of Ogden-Martin came to the Finance Committee he chairs on Tuesday, Yaroslavsky said he needed more assurances than city officials had given thus far before he would give his final approval to the first plant later this year.

“I’m alarmed, frankly, at the information I’ve been reading about this stuff (dioxins),” Yaroslavsky said. “It’s been alarming people all over the world. This is something much more sinister and diabolical than putting (trash) up in the Hollywood Hills.”

Several council members also indicated they wanted to take a closer look at the project before giving final approval. They urged Wednesday that the city impose a flat limit on the amount of dioxins that the plant could emit. Such a flat limit has been imposed in Marion County, Oregon, and in San Marcos in suburban San Diego County to make enforcement of violations easier. In San Marcos, the plant operator has also agreed to sign a contract giving enforcement power directly to local residents.

Before construction on the Lancer plant can begin, the South Coast Air Quality Management District must issue an air pollution permit. The district is expected to require that a scientific “health risk assessment” be completed.