Santa Clarita Expected to Back Larger Landfill

The Santa Clarita City Council appears to be leaning toward endorsing the expansion of a garbage dump that neighboring Granada Hills residents want shut down.

However, council members Tuesday night delayed until Jan. 10 a decision on whether to support the proposed enlargement of the 238-acre Sunshine Canyon Landfill in the Santa Susana Mountains between Santa Clarita and Granada Hills after hearing arguments from representatives of the North Valley Coalition.

Members of the coalition, an organization of homeowners formed to fight a proposed 760-acre expansion of the dump, asked the council not to rule on the merits of the plan until after an environmental impact report on the project is released next month by the Los Angeles County Sanitation District.

Santa Clarita Mayor Howard P. (Buck) McKeon said Wednesday that the homeowners “presented good arguments,” but he and other Santa Clarita city officials conceded that they are leaning toward supporting expansion of the facility, being sought by the company that operates the landfill.

Prime Candidates for Dumps

Santa Clarita officials said they hope to eliminate the need for development of other dumps in canyons near their city if they back the Sunshine Canyon project. Los Angeles County has identified Elsmere and Towsley canyons, both in the Santa Clarita Valley, as prime candidates for dump sites.

“This is a very serious problem,” McKeon said. “To bury your head now will cause some very serious problems in 1991 when we will run out of landfill space.”

He said he fears that if such projects as the Sunshine Canyon expansion are not undertaken soon, people throughout the county will begin indiscriminately dumping their trash in sparsely populated areas of the Santa Clarita Valley.

“You have one landfill to worry about,” Councilwoman Jan Heidt told Granada Hills residents Tuesday night. “We have four--two existing and two proposed. We have to act in our own best interests.”

“We are approaching a garbage crisis,” said Councilman Carl Boyer III, who said he leans toward approval of the expansion. “We know that recycling won’t be enough.”

However, Councilwoman Jo Anne Darcy said council members should remain neutral until they fully review the county’s environmental impact report.

In a letter dated Nov. 1, Browning-Ferris Industries, operator of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill, asked Santa Clarita council members to support the expansion before the county Board of Supervisors, which must approve the project. The supervisors are expected to consider the expansion early next year.

“An expansion would assure the people of Santa Clarita adequate landfill space to dump their trash,” company official Gregg R. Short said.

The Santa Clarita Civic Assn., an organization of Santa Clarita Valley residents, has endorsed the expansion.

“Expanding an already efficiently run landfill is better than opening others,” the organization’s president, Muriel Usselman, told the City Council.

At the beginning of Tuesday’s discussion, McKeon announced that the president of a Granada Hills property owners group had telephoned him at work and threatened to picket his Western clothing store if he supported the landfill’s expansion.

“I approach this with an open mind, but I refuse to be intimidated,” McKeon said.

North Valley Coalition members apologized to McKeon.

“I’m embarrassed,” said Mary Edwards, the coalition’s secretary. “I don’t want to pit community against community.”

Edwards and other speakers argued that expansion of the landfill would destroy land designated by the county as a significant ecological area. She said the coalition opposes dumps anywhere in the Santa Susana Mountains, including those proposed in Towsley and Elsmere canyons.

“These areas are so gorgeous,” Edwards said. “We don’t want them destroyed.”

Along with postponing action on the landfill expansion, the City Council unanimously voted to direct the city staff to set up a meeting between Santa Clarita and Los Angeles city and county representatives to discuss a long-range regional landfill plan.