Glendale Bars L.A.’s Trash From Landfill

The Glendale City Council this week voted to prohibit the dumping of trash collected in Los Angeles at the Scholl Canyon Landfill in Glendale.

The action was taken because, council members said, Los Angeles had ignored warnings from the state that toxics may be seeping out of the Toyon Canyon Landfill in Griffith Park on Glendale’s border. The Glendale council fears that leakage from Toyon, which is owned by Los Angeles, may pollute Glendale’s ground water.

Los Angeles stopped using Toyon last November when the landfill reached capacity but has not properly closed the dump, said Glendale Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg, a member of the California Waste Management Board, which issued the warning.

When she introduced the ordinance last week, Bremberg said Glendale “needs to protect our land from our uproarious big neighbor to the south which continues to close its landfills and bring its trash elsewhere.”

Beginning Oct. 27, trash collected by Los Angeles city trucks and by private collectors within that city’s boundaries will have to be transported to other dumps in the San Fernando Valley.

Scholl Canyon is owned by Glendale but operated by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts under an agreement with Glendale permitting dumping of trash collected in other nearby cities, such as Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge. County officials agreed to go along with Glendale’s ban against Los Angeles.

Sterling Buesch, assistant director of refuse collection for Los Angeles, said trash collected by city trucks in North-Central and South-Central Los Angeles, which is now dumped in Scholl, will have to be taken instead to the city’s Lopez Canyon Landfill in Pacoima.

Buesch said city trucks dump about 2,000 to 3,000 tons a month at Scholl Canyon, only a small percentage of what is collected throughout the city. “We haven’t been taking much in there,” he said, indicating that the ban will have little effect on the city.

Commercial trash collectors using Scholl will be forced to travel to the privately owned Bradley West Dump in Sun Valley or Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills.

George Miller, Glendale public works director, said about 420,000 tons of trash collected in Los Angeles have been dumped annually at Scholl Canyon, 40% of the yearly total.