Pilot Program Will Find Recycling Is Already Up and Flying

Drivers of Los Angeles city garbage trucks who swing by Lake View Terrace neighborhoods for the first time next month, when the city’s pilot recycling program expands, may be surprised by the many neat bundles of paper, glass, aluminum cans and plastic bottles awaiting them.

That’s because Lake View Terrace residents have been voluntarily skimming recyclable items from their trash for more than a year as part of an independent curb-side recycling program.

The East San Fernando Valley community of 2,500 homes is the closest city area to Lopez Canyon Landfill, the only city-operated garbage dump. That proximity and the knowledge that the landfill is rapidly filling has inspired residents to take a close look at what they throw away.

“Seeing garbage trucks go by your house, being caught in traffic when you can’t pass them, it does affect you,” said Arnease Finley, an avid recycler. “I’m opposed to the Lopez landfill continually staying here, but I realize we have to put our garbage somewhere. My answer right now is to recycle as much as we can.”

The Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn., one of two local residents groups, started the monthly recycling program 14 months ago with curb-side pickup at about 100 homes. Since then the program has grown to include about 400 homes, said Eileen Barry, one of its organizers.

It has been so successful, in fact, that initially the community shied away from the city pilot program, which started in the Valley in 1987 and will more than double in size July 24--from about 10,000 homes to an estimated 26,600. Barry said they feared that the city might not be as efficient as the private company with which they had contracted. Also, he said, they did not want to lose the profits they earned by selling the recyclable items to the company.

That money--ranging from $80 to $200 a month for the community--has paid for such things as landscaping a prominent but barren corner of Foothill Boulevard, art supplies for elementary schools and a 24-hour community hot line.

As a result, Phyllis Hines, who represented Lake View Terrace on the Los Angeles Solid Waste Citizens Advisory Board, asked that the community be left off the list of city-designated recycling areas--perhaps until the program spreads to the entire city. City Sanitary Engineer Brent Lorscheider said that will not be for at least three years.

City Pickup

But news last week that 1,900 homes in Lake View Terrace are scheduled for city pickup beginning July 24 came only days after residents learned that their private recycler--the Sylmar-based Community Recycling Center--was no longer willing to do curb-side pickup. The management of the center decided that the program was unprofitable.

Hines said Lake View Terrace probably will go along with the city program and stage additional collections of glass and aluminum on its own. “The most important thing is to keep this stuff out of the landfill,” she said.

Even after the city’s program gets up to full speed, independent recycling drives and programs such as the one in Lake View Terrace will be allowed to continue as long as no one scavenges from the recyclables awaiting city pickup, Lorscheider said.

“We don’t want to compete with the charities and the people that are out there doing it on their own,” Lorscheider said.

During the past year, Lake View Terrace residents have joined with their neighbors in Pacoima and county areas of Kagel Canyon to protest a proposal to extend to at least 2001 the life span of the Lopez Canyon dump, which was supposed to close in 1992. That would also mean filling up a third canyon at the landfill and nearly doubling the 4,000 tons of garbage the dump accepts daily.

The protesters say that the landfill emits sickening odors that waft through their neighborhoods, and they worry that water draining through it may carry toxic chemicals into ground water. However, city Bureau of Sanitation officials say that the landfill is safe and that there is nowhere else to put that garbage.

Recycling is part of the city’s plan to extend the landfill’s life.

The city’s pilot recycling program, which began collecting recyclable items each week at 1,500 Valley households in June, 1987, already includes a few neighborhoods in Sunland, Sylmar, Pacoima, North Hollywood, Reseda, Granada Hills and Canoga Park. No apartments are included in the present pickups and neither are they part of immediate plans.

On July 24, the second phase of the program is scheduled to extend collection to parts of Studio City and Lake View Terrace and expand service in Sunland, Reseda, Canoga Park and Granada Hills.

Residents of the newly included areas will receive notices about a week before recycling begins, Lorscheider said, when they also will receive recycling containers into which households are asked to put recyclable trash.