Bernson Urges Effort to Shut Dump in 1988

At the current rate of trash disposal, the Sunshine Canyon Landfill will be filled up in 1988 and that will be a good time to push for closure of the Granada Hills dump, Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson told residents of the area on Wednesday.

Leaders of a group opposing the dump, in turn, asked about 300 northwestern San Fernando Valley residents meeting an elementary school auditorium in Granada Hills to document health problems caused by the dump, lobby legislators and contribute to a legal fund to fight proposed expansion of the facility.

Many in the crowd wore masks around their necks to protest the landfill, which residents long have complained spreads smells and debris that makes living in their upper middle-class neighborhood unpleasant.

The dump’s owner, Houston-based Browning-Ferris Industries, has applied to the city and county for permission to more than double the size of the 230-acre landfill, which has grown in recent years to one of the five largest in the nation.

At the time the dump was built, there were no homes nearby, Bernson said. Now, there are homes within a quarter mile of the facility and winds coming from the Newhall Pass send debris, dust and trash into the neighborhood.

“I think we’ve paid our dues here,” said the councilman, who lives nearby.

Although the landfill has a permit to operate through 1991, Bernson said, he will ask the Council to shut it down when it is filled up, projected to happen next year.

Browning-Ferris has proposed that the dump, which is on city property, expand onto 937 acres of adjoining county land. The company is also seeking permission to extend its operations well into the 21st Century.

Would Require Approval

Expansion would have to be approved by the City Council, the county Board of Supervisors and the state.

Wednesday’s meeting was organized by the North Valley Coalition, a group which meets weekly to figure out ways to fight the dump.

The Sunshine Canyon Landfill opened in 1956 on 425 acres of city and county land. For most of its existence, it took in only about 50 tons of trash per week, according to Greig Smith, Bernson’s top aide. But as more and more city and county dumps have closed, creating a countywide garbage disposal crisis, the amount of material dumped there has increased to 7,000 tons a day, Smith said.

The landfill now gets about one third of the city’s solid waste and about one-sixth of the county’s, officials said.