L.A. OKs Extension of Review on Lopez Canyon Report

After weeks of postponements, the Los Angeles City Council agreed Tuesday to allow two more months for the public to review a report on the environmental impact of expanding Lopez Canyon Landfill.

Councilmen Ernani Bernardi and Joel Wachs requested the delay after the city released its response to community concerns about the expansion. They said concerned citizens needed more time to review the three-inch-thick document.

“This is what it’s all about,” Bernardi said Tuesday, dropping the response on a table with a loud thud.

Before the delay approved Tuesday, the comment period on the environmental impact report and responses would have ended with a public hearing Monday before the Board of Public Works downtown. Now it will conclude in mid-October, with a board hearing in Lake View Terrace, near the city-operated dump.

City sanitation officials want to double the size of the dump and keep it open through 2005 instead of closing it in 1992 as planned. Dump neighbors vehemently oppose that plan.

The 60-day delay had been held over twice during previous council meetings so that the city attorney’s office could make sure that it did not violate city laws.

Later Tuesday, public works and sanitation officials said the delay will further hinder their ability to prevent the city’s trash disposal problems from worsening.

Edward J. Avila, president of the public works board, said the fate of the northeast San Fernando Valley dump and the 4,000 tons of trash it receives daily will ultimately be decided in Los Angeles Superior Court. The city is challenging an order by the California Waste Management Board to limit dumping at Lopez Canyon to levels set in a 1978 permit. The next court hearing is scheduled Aug. 30.

Regardless of the outcome of that lawsuit, the city intends to seek the state’s permission to expand the dump, Avila said.

High Cost

Meanwhile, citing the high cost of Los Angeles County serving as the local policing agency for the state’s solid waste management program, County Supervisor Mike Antonovich introduced a motion Tuesday to return to the state responsibilities for 83 dumps and trash transfer stations in the county.

Antonovich’s motion is scheduled for a vote Tuesday.

During the 1987-88 fiscal year, the county spent $455,000 monitoring trash facilities, which was not reimbursed by the state, creating “serious fiscal problems for the residents of Los Angeles County,” Antonovich said in his motion.

If the state polices the dumps instead of the county, California Waste Management Board officials said, the county will be billed for the cost of those services.

Scaling Back

In documents submitted to the county Monday, the city Bureau of Sanitation reported that it had already started scaling back operations at Lopez Canyon. The report, signed by sanitation Director Delwin A. Biagi, said that 400 trucks or less are being admitted to the dump daily and that dump workers are being instructed to dump below the 1,725-foot elevation. Both of those limits were part of the state order.

However, dump neighbors contend that trash is being piled higher than ever.

“They’re taking advantage of this legal loophole to jam in as much trash as they can,” said Rob Zapple, who lives in Kagel Canyon.

Avila denied that charge.

“With all this attention, do you think we’re going to go in there and try and pull a fast one?” he asked.

Times Staff Writer Lynn Steinberg contributed to this story.