Pact Removes Obstacle to Use of Trash Incinerators

An agreement has been reached that removes, at least temporarily, a major obstacle to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s plan to burn city trash in new incinerators that will produce electricity, sources close to the negotiations said Monday.

As a result, city officials will be freed to finish clearing a site in South-Central Los Angeles for the first trash-burning plant, and to apply for crucial air pollution permits, before a study of the health risks is completed this spring.

The agreement removes a political roadblock posed by City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, the Westside mayoral hopeful who has held up approval of a 20-year contract that the city’s professional management wanted to sign with Ogden Martin Co., the firm selected to build and run the South-Central incinerator.

Last week, city sanitation officials said the contract needed to be signed promptly to ensure that the project’s $235-million bond-financing arrangement does not fall through. But Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee, objected to signing a long-term contract before the health-risk study is completed and debated later this year by the City Council.

As part of the agreement reached Monday, Ogden Martin Co. will go along with Yaroslavsky’s wish to defer signing the full 20-year contract until all the health risks of trash burning are known. Instead, sanitation officials plan to sign a temporary “mini-contract” with Ogden Martin to cover the company against any costs it assumes in applying for air pollution permits.

Details remain to be worked out in discussions between Ogden Martin and Chief Administrative Officer Keith Comrie, who is heading negotiations for the city.

But an “agreement in principle” is expected to be approved today at a meeting of Yaroslavsky’s Finance and Revenue Committee, according to a company official and City Hall sources.

Recycling trash through large incinerators, dubbed the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery (LANCER) project, have been proposed by Bradley and sanitation officials as the answer to the city’s wish to reduce its reliance on costly and environmentally sensitive landfills.

The council has given tentative approval to two more plants, at yet-to-be-chosen sites on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley, although increasing controversy about trash burning and expected difficulties in obtaining air pollution permits have reduced the likelihood that the final two incinerators will ever be built.

More than $12 million has already been invested to study the process--widely used in Europe, Japan and the United States--and to obtain a 41-acre site near Alameda and 41st streets in South-Central Los Angeles. Occupants of the site, including a church, were relocated based on preliminary City Council approvals of the project.

However, increased publicity about the incinerator has spurred growing opposition in the vicinity of the South-Central site.

Most controversy has arisen because the plants, along with electricity, also produce cancer-linked compounds known as dioxins.

The agreement reached Monday does not address a demand by Yaroslavsky that Ogden Martin specify contractually that the LANCER plants will emit fewer dioxins than the firm is so far willing to guarantee.