Call Tour ‘Staged Show’ : Critics Accuse Landfill of Cleaning Up Its Act

Only one thing was missing Thursday afternoon when California Waste Management Board officials toured Lopez Canyon Landfill to prepare for a hearing today on the dump’s operating permit: the trash.

Little patches of household garbage at the top of the Los Angeles city dump were being neatly covered with dirt. A few stray papers wafted here and there, but landfill workers swiftly snapped them up with spike-tipped poles.

“That mountain you see on your left is 1.1 million tons of trash,” said John de la Rosa, landfill manager and official tour guide. But when many of the tour participants leaned forward to look, they saw a mountain ridge that had long since sprouted grass and small shrubs.

Residents nearest the dump--who live in Lake View Terrace, Pacoima and Kagel Canyon neighborhoods--joined the tour and swelled the sightseers to more than 100.

Picture Incomplete

They said that the picture of the landfill presented to the group was incomplete and that the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation had cleaned house for the occasion.

“Normally, the working face of the dump is three times what we saw today. The trash is much thicker--up to a 10-foot wall of trash up to 200 feet long,” said Rob Zapple, a member of the Kagel Canyon Civic Assn. and a frequent landfill critic. “And the amount of traffic going on up there is usually much heavier. I don’t think we saw one garbage truck releasing its load.”

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), who also took the two-hour tour, called it a staged show. Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge) said the dump wasn’t so clean during a previous visit.

De la Rosa called the beautification charges lies. William Knapp, manager of refuse collection and disposal for the city, said state law requires the landfill to promptly cover trash.

“I can honestly say what you’re seeing now is typical of how we operate,” Knapp said.

It was not the only disagreement that arose during the tour.

Mal Toy, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation, said trucks typically stop arriving about 3 p.m., when the tour started. Zapple and other neighbors said they see and hear full trucks arriving until 5 or 6 p.m. on many days.

Wall of Trash

Knapp said grading, drainage pipes and a catch basin added to the face closest to Kagel Canyon after a wall of trash washed down streets in 1983 would prevent a similar accident.

But Kagel Canyon resident Dennis Ghiatis brought photographs that he said were taken in 1987 that showed the basin not draining properly and the graded hills beginning to erode after a light rainfall. He said that in a rainy year, Kagel Canyon could be in trouble again.

These drastically different perceptions of the dump will be sorted through by the Waste Management Board during its first hearing on the dump’s permit, set for 10 a.m. today at Glendale City Hall.

The landfill was issued a state permit in 1978, but because of an oversight, the permit was never renewed, said Chris Peck, Waste Management Board spokesman.

Several basic permit requirements do not reflect current operations, Peck said. The permit states that the volume of trash dumped there should be 8,000 tons a month, but the city dumps 4,000 tons a day. Another issue is landfill height, which the permit sets at a maximum 1,725 feet but has hit 1,764 feet, according to city tabulations, and is still growing.

Local Opposition

Originally, the eight-member board had planned to review the city’s proposed permit changes during its regular meeting in Sacramento. But Peck said the volume of local opposition and concern about the dump, which increased when two landfill workers fainted March 8 after breathing toxic fumes, caused the board to set a public hearing in Los Angeles instead.

Although no decision on the permit will be made until mid-July, board Chairman John E. Gallagher said he was impressed by what he saw Thursday.

“I think it’s a well-run landfill,” he said. “We’d be hard put to criticize as a result of this tour.”

When he was told about the neighbors’ allegations, Gallagher said: “If there’s a question in the mind of anybody that this was spring cleaning, they should raise that issue . . . either here or at the hearing.”