Glendale Law Will Send More Trash to the Valley

The amount of refuse hauled to landfills in the San Fernando Valley will increase significantly because of Glendale’s decision this week to close its municipal landfill to trash from Los Angeles and Burbank, sanitation officials said Thursday.

A Glendale ordinance that is to take effect in late October will divert at least 1,500 tons of rubbish a day--or 150 truckloads--from Glendale’s Scholl Canyon Landfill to dumps in the Valley that already receive most of Los Angeles’ trash. Officials said the waste will go to the nearest big waste sites, which are the privately owned Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Sylmar and Bradley West Landfill in Sun Valley, and the county-owned Calabasas Landfill in Agoura.

The ordinance, adopted Tuesday by the Glendale City Council, will trigger the second major increase in refuse hauling to the Valley in less than a year.

With the closure last fall of Los Angeles’ Toyon Canyon Landfill in Griffith Park, the city began hauling an extra 160 truckloads of refuse a day to its Lopez Canyon Landfill in Lake View Terrace--the only city-owned dump still operating--and to Sunshine Canyon.

L.A. Trash Ends Up in Valley

Virtually all of the household refuse in Los Angeles ends up at Valley landfills, along with a substantial amount of the solid waste produced by commercial and industrial firms in the city.

Glendale City Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg, who introduced the ordinance, said it is intended to save dwindling space at the Scholl Canyon dump.

“We did not wish that our landfill be filled up with their trash to the detriment of our own citizens,” she said.

According to Steve Maguin, chief of solid waste management for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, which runs Scholl Canyon for Glendale under contract, space at the landfill would be exhausted in about 15 years at the current filling rate. The city’s action should extend the dump’s life about seven years, he said.

According to a recent report by the sanitation districts, the trash generated in the county will fill all approved landfill space in the county in seven years.

“You’re going to see more of this happening,” said Dean Wise, a district manager with Browning Ferris Industries, which operates the Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

Aimed at Los Angeles

The Glendale ordinance puts Scholl Canyon off limits to “any refuse or waste which has its origin within any city which either owns, operates, maintains or regulates a sanitary landfill . . . within its municipal limits.”

The measure is aimed mainly at Los Angeles, which now dumps about 420,000 tons of trash a year at Scholl Canyon. Only about 30,000 tons of this are household trash collected by city crews. About 390,000 tons are collected at commercial and industrial sites by private haulers, who, along with their customers, will bear the brunt of the ban.

The ordinance will have a “horrendous” effect on some private haulers who depend on Scholl Canyon, said Carl Agajanian, a member of the board of the Greater Los Angeles Solid Waste Management Assn., a rubbish haulers trade group.

Agajanian said the measure will increase haul times and distances, fuel consumption and waiting lines at remaining dumps.

Possible Rise in Costs

Agajanian said his own company--Champion Rubbish Service, Inc., which hauls about 400 tons of trash a day to Scholl Canyon from Los Angeles--will have to put more trucks on the road because of the longer haul times to Bradley West and Sunshine Canyon. This, he said, will force him to raise prices.

The City of Burbank hauls all household refuse and some commercial trash to its own municipal landfill. But private haulers, who take about 50 to 60 tons of trash a day from Burbank businesses to Scholl Canyon, will have to travel farther once the ordinance takes effect.

Glendale has agreements to take trash from La Canada Flintridge, Pasadena and South Pasadena. Officials said the arrangements will be preserved because those communities have no landfills.