Dump Owner Tries to Soothe Irate Neighbors

Operators of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill have recently installed safety measures and drawn up plans to beautify the surroundings in an effort to win over about 300 area residents and Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson who are involved in a campaign to close the dump.

But the introduction of taller fences, dust-reducing materials and a couple thousand trees and shrubs do not seem to be deterring the opposition.

Residents are suspicious of the cleanup measures at the Granada Hills landfill and contend that they are insufficient and too late.

“They haven’t heard our pleas for a couple of years,” said Mary Edwards, secretary of the North Valley Coalition, a homeowner group fighting to close the dump.

“I think right now they’re just trying to clean up their act because people are obviously looking at them very closely,” she said.

760-Acre Expansion

Residents say the measures taken by the dump to alleviate problems are a veiled attempt to gain acceptance of a proposal to expand the dump by 760 acres. The proposal is pending before the City Council and the county Board of Supervisors. Without the expansion, which would extend northwest from the existing dump into county territory, the dump would be full by 1991, when its current permit expires, landfill operators said.

Operators say the expansion, which they believe could be approved as early as next year, would enable the dump to operate well into the 21st Century.

Bernson claims that the dump, which opened in 1958, is a public nuisance and has violated conditions imposed in 1966, when the city granted a zoning variance to allow it to continue operating. A variance is required to operate a private landfill in the city on land that is not zoned for heavy industrial use.

The landfill, which covers about 230 acres of hilly terrain, borders a city park and an affluent Granada Hills residential neighborhood.

Sunshine Canyon is one of the largest dumps in the city. Most of the garbage generated by about 2.5 million people in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica ends up in the landfill, said Dean Wise, district manager for Browning Ferris Industries, which owns the dump.

An estimated 6,500 tons of trash is hauled in daily, more than twice as much as the 2,500 tons a day handled at the landfill in 1978, Wise said.

There was only one house in the area when the dump opened 30 years ago, Wise said. Today, there are several houses within a quarter mile of the dump, and many residents complain of foul odors wafting from the dump and litter and brownish dust blowing onto their winding, suburban streets.

Despite the complaints, a city official said the dump will be difficult to close because it is so large and serves so much of Southern California.

‘Political Reality’

“The political reality is it would have to be a very compelling case in terms of adverse impacts to shut it down,” said Jon Perica, city zoning administrator. “I think the reality there is that the city wants to safeguard the operation.”

Perica said all of the trash in the city of Los Angeles north of the Ventura Freeway goes to the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. The city most likely will put additional requirements on the landfill to ensure that it operates safely and causes fewer problems for the surrounding homeowners, he said.

When a Times reporter toured the dump last week, wind-whipped clouds of dust temporarily enveloped the area. Wise claimed that the reporter was “seeing it at its worst” because of the winds that reached speeds of up to 60 m.p.h.

A few weeks ago, Wise said, employees began applying a soil-sealing material to keep the dust from flying. He said most of the dump has been sprayed with the sealer, except for one of the recently cut dumping areas, which is on a steep hillside and difficult to reach. That area will be treated soon, he said.

Water trucks are supposed to “run continuously” and combat dust by spraying the area with water. But on a recent tour of the landfill operations, only one water truck was operating. Wise said the dump had three trucks, but one was not in use due to mechanical problems.

He acknowledged that the dump produces dust, but said it is mostly confined to the landfill property.

Nevertheless, neighbors said it was common to see brownish dust clouds from the dump hovering over their neighborhood.

On the other hand, neighbors say blowing trash has become less of a problem since Browning Ferris Industries last month installed higher fences along the ridgeline of the Santa Susana Mountains that separates the dump from the residential neighborhood. A series of fences made of netting strung between 25-foot-high telephone poles was installed to snare airborne litter.

Also, dump employees daily pick up trash that lands on the hillside or is caught in bushes, Wise said. But if the trash ends up too far up the steep hillside and beyond the employees’ grasp, it is often left there or only “periodically” cleaned up, he said.

The trash sometimes makes its way over the hills to neighboring O’Melveny Park, a 720-acre wilderness park, said Don Mullally, park caretaker.

“I could spend my whole life up here just picking up papers that blow over from the dump,” Mullally said.

Worried About Dust

He said he worries when he sees clouds of dust hanging over the cliffs where ravens and red-tailed hawks nest. He believes more varieties of wildlife would be drawn to the park were it not for the dump.

Dump operators say they left several acres of the mountainous area undisturbed and that wildlife is still free to roam in these areas.

“I’ve seen a lot of birds flying over the landfill and I don’t know that we’re driving anything away,” Wise said. But he acknowledged that litter sometimes blows over into the park--particularly plastic grocery bags--and that he sends dump employees out each Monday to go through the park and clean up the debris.

Mullally said he is worried that the dump may pollute the park’s creeks and streams. But environmental engineers, who have conducted studies for environmental impact reports, have found no evidence of ground-water pollution.

Despite the studies’ findings, neighbors remain skeptical of the motives of Browning Ferris Industries.

“Now that they want this big expansion, they’re suddenly getting real good and putting in all these safeguards,” said Edwards, the North Valley Coalition’s secretary. “Well, they can’t go back and correct all the things they’ve done before.”

Bernson and his staff echo that sentiment.

“Where were these controls before if they really cared about the neighborhood?” asked Bernson’s chief deputy, Greig Smith, who lives within two miles of the dump. “They’re there all of a sudden because we’ve lodged these nuisance complaints. Now, they’re going out of their way to be nice guys because they have to. . . . But will they go back to their old ways and not give a damn about the community? Probably.”

Over the years, Bernson’s office has received about 1,200 calls complaining about the landfill, Smith said. Most of the complaints cited methane gas odors, dust, litter and increased traffic. Some neighbors have complained of respiratory problems they attribute to the dust. Bernson’s office soon will mail medical questionnaires to 5,000 area residents to determine if respiratory ailments are widespread, Smith said.

Operators of Sunshine Canyon Landfill say they have met with homeowners several times over the years and recently offered again to meet and discuss their concerns. However, homeowners say no recent overtures have been made.

“We have offered to sit down with Hal and the homeowners . . . and it looks promising that they might sit down and talk to us,” said James T. Aidukas, director of environmental affairs for Browning Ferris Industries.

Aidukas said he wants to discuss the proposed landscaping of the ridgeline which surrounds the landfill, and whose contours were filled and graded to accommodate dump operations. Residents characterize the altered ridgeline as unsightly and Bernson’s office calls it “visual blight.”

Responding to neighbors’ complaints, dump operators said they want to add 2,200 plants and trees to the flattened mountaintop “to blend into the natural environment.”

“We’re sensitive to their concerns and I want to give them an aesthetically pleasing thing to look at,” Aidukas said.

“Because no matter what the future holds, whether we close or expand, what’s here is going to remain here and we want to make sure what’s left is reasonably acceptable,” he said.

Residents Wary

But residents regard efforts to involve them in the landfill’s beautification with cynicism.

“That’s wonderful, but that’s not enough,” said Dotti Main. “What about our health problems?

“Sure, we’d like it to look pretty but, more important, we’d like our children to be safe from the health hazards,” she said.

Magdy K. Sharobeem, a city industrial waste inspector, said he spends between five and seven hours per week checking the site and has found no hazards associated with the dump. He said he saw a brownish cloud of dust while inspecting the dump last week and reported it to dump operators.

“I’m really impressed with the work they’re doing,” Sharobeem said. “They’re doing a good job and we are on their backs all the time.”

Meanwhile, trash haulers interviewed at the landfill said they hope the city does not close the dump. Several complained that the closure of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill would force them to drive miles out of their way.

Said Bob Ludwig, a hauler who has been coming since the dump opened 30 years ago: “It would raise hell with us.

“We’ve got to have some place to dump and this dump was here before the houses were,” he said.