Canyon Cleanup Incentive Fails; New Tack Taken

Ron Young said he did a good deed for Los Angeles a year ago and thought he would be rewarded for it.

Young said he tried to help clean up Aliso Canyon by notifying the authorities about a man who was illegally dumping tree stumps there.

City Councilman Hal Bernson had offered a $500 reward for catching those illegally dumping in the canyon. But Young, 26, whose home in Porter Ranch is next to it, didn’t receive the reward. In fact, he wound up in the red.

A week after he identified the illegal dumper, someone vandalized his pickup truck, setting him back several hundred dollars. He suspects a connection.

“Here I am doing the city’s job, and I wind up the loser,” Young complained. He said vandalism is rare in his neighborhood; he thinks the illegal dumper bashed in the grill and windshield of his truck.

Bernson is now using another tactic. He has asked the city Bureau of Street Maintenance to install a metal fence at the end of Sesnon Boulevard, and the agency is complying.

Cars, refrigerators and household garbage have been shoved down the steep grade there. “It’s practically become a free landfill,” said Lee Hintlian, one of Bernson’s aides. “That leads to rats, and this is right adjacent to some very exclusive housing.”

Curt Bianchi, general superintendent for street maintenance, said that, in the next few months, his office will put up a barrier made of six-inch metal pipe. He said it will be about 100 feet from the edge of the canyon.

“We’re all behind it if it will clean things up,” said Harriet Elias, a resident of the area, which features winding, hilly roads and $300,000 homes.

But Young said: “I’ve given up. Those people who dump stuff can do whatever they want.”

He didn’t receive the reward because of a technicality that would prevent almost anyone from cashing in on Bernson’s offer, Hintlian said. Collecting the reward depends on the arrest and conviction of the illegal dumper, he said.

Tracked Down, Warned

Young, a ramp service employee for United Airlines, had seen Bernson’s reward offer in one of the councilman’s newsletters but didn’t notice the proviso.

After receiving Young’s information, containing the license number of the suspect’s car, Bernson tracked him down and sent him a letter warning him that he had been observed illegally dumping. The letter also told the suspect not to do it again and reminded him of the city’s laws against illegal dumping, Hintlian said.

An arrest would have required a police officer’s witnessing the incident, Hintlian said.