Bradley Abandons Plan to Burn Garbage in L.A.

Mayor Tom Bradley today abandoned the city’s plan to burn trash in Los Angeles, leaving surprised city officials with no clear way to dispose of future trash and virtually ensuring that residents will be ordered to separate recyclable items from their garbage.

Bradley cited questions about the health risk of burning 1,600 tons of garbage a day in the Los Angeles City Energy Recovery (Lancer) incinerator, which has been proposed for a 13-acre site in South-Central Los Angeles.

“I’ve seen and heard enough,” Bradley said.

A study of the health risks prepared for the city Bureau of Sanitation concluded in April that there was no threat to public safety. But Bradley said he was swayed by doubts raised recently about the methods used in the study.

‘Peer Review’ Panel

Some of those doubts were apparently raised by a so-called “peer review” committee of academics and scientists that the City Council convened to analyze the health risks posed by the Lancer project.

The committee’s report was due to be released next week.

In recent months, the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. and a panel of UCLA faculty and graduate students have also criticized the incineration idea. Stopping Lancer has also become a cause celebre among local environmental groups and in the South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the plant was to be located.

L.A. Basin Different

Bradley said the trash-to-energy concept works and would be acceptable in other parts of the country. But he said the Los Angeles air basin, home to the worst air quality in the country, is different.

“I believe the health of the people is paramount and must be protected,” Bradley said.

The mayor was joined by Gilbert W. Lindsay, until today the project’s chief proponent on the City Council. Residents of his inner city district, where the project was to be built, had been overwhelmingly opposed to the project.

“They are just frightened to death,” Lindsay said. “I can’t have my constituency unusually unhappy.”

The abrupt cancellation of the Lancer project ends a campaign for approval that lasted at least five years and has cost the city at least $12 million. The site the city condemned for the project can be resold to recover some but not all of the costs.