Complaints Shadow Good-Will Tour of Sunshine Canyon Landfill

Los Angeles city officials and leaders of half a dozen neighborhood groups toured the Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Sylmar on Saturday morning to discuss waste disposal problems with the operators of the dump, Browning-Ferris Industries.

In the past, Browning-Ferris has quarreled with residents over the dump, one of the largest in Los Angeles County. The idea Saturday was to bring together landfill operators, San Fernando Valley residents and Los Angeles city officials for a discussion of what both sides called the city’s looming waste-disposal crisis.

“We’re not here to talk about Sunshine Canyon,” said attorney Richard H. Close, president of the Coalition of Valley Communities. “We’ve got a trash crisis here in the city. We need to talk about how the city is going to solve it.”

Four of the nine landfills in the county are scheduled to be closed in the next five years, prompting concern that there will be no place to put the about 45,000 tons of garbage produced in the county each day.

Four landfills rim the northern Valley, and many residents have charged that the dumps are mismanaged and allow toxic gases and materials to endanger surrounding residences.

On Tuesday, a Los Angeles City Council committee upheld a decision by the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals that will cut dumping at the Sunshine Canyon site by 90% after 1989. The decision, which Browning-Ferris intends to appeal to the entire council, came as the result of longstanding complaints by Granada Hills residents about the dump’s odors, dust and litter.

Browning-Ferris held the tour to improve its image and to push for plans to extend the dump over the city boundary into the county.

Frequent Inspections

“This site is inspected roughly 300 times a year by the state, the city, the county and the air quality district,” Browning-Ferris Vice President Les Bittenson said as the bus lumbered to the top of the landfill, a 1,700-foot-high mesa under which lies millions of tons of garbage.

To the north of the landfill lies an untouched canyon on county land, where Browning-Ferris hopes to expand. At a distance, goats could be seen grazing at the foot of the canyon. “There’s capacity for 13 million tons of garbage there,” Bittenson said.

Some activists seemed impressed, but not Granada Hills resident Frank McArthur, who called the proposed expansion “a bad idea.”

Milena Miller of the Reseda Community Assn. said the landfill was “a necessary evil,” but added that it was important to eliminate garbage “at the source” with recycling programs.

Several community activists attacked City Councilman Hal Bernson for his support for development projects that they said are contributing to the growth of the city’s population and adding to the thousands of tons of garbage produced by the city each day.

‘People Keep Coming’

Bernson responded angrily: “The problem is that people are going to keep coming to Southern California for jobs, for homes. You’re not going to be able to stop growth. That’s ridiculous.”

Miller appeared unconvinced. “I’m seething inside, Mr. Bernson. Don’t tell me that growth is not an issue,” she said. “I’m doing my part and you’re telling me I have to accept this growth all around me.”

Bernson said part of the problem may be solved if a dump proposed for Elsmere Canyon in the Santa Clarita Valley is approved.

Lynn Wessell, a spokesman for Browning-Ferris, said the solution was the proposed expansion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. “We’re here operating safely; we just have to move over a little,” he said. “We expect county approval. We’ve got community support.”