Cities to Form Agency to Plan for Disposal of Trash by Train

An association of San Gabriel Valley cities voted Thursday to create an agency to begin discussions with private companies on shipping the area’s trash by train to desert landfills in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The action came at an evening meeting of the San Gabriel Valley Assn. of Cities in Pomona on a recommendation by a committee of valley-area municipal officials who had been studying the problem of what to do with trash if Los Angeles County dumps continue to run out of room.

La Verne City Councilman Thomas Harvey, head of the association’s solid waste committee, said private companies are offering workable plans to dispose of trash in the desert, although “there are a lot of problems to be worked out.”

The problems include obtaining environmental permits for landfills in the desert and finding sites suitable for loading trash onto trains.

Harvey said planning must begin now because experts have predicted that Los Angeles County will start running out of places to put garbage in 1992, unless existing dumps are expanded or new ones are opened.

The committee looked at 10 rail-haul proposals from private companies and recommended two. Harvey said the committee had planned to narrow its choice to a single system, but found roughly equal merit in a proposal made by Mine Reclamation Corp. and another made jointly by Waste Management of North America Inc. and the Santa Fe Railway. Both disposal sites would be about 200 miles from the San Gabriel Valley.

Mine Reclamation proposes to ship trash on a Southern Pacific rail line and a private railroad to an iron ore pit at Eagle Mountain, midway between Indio and Blythe.

Waste Management and Santa Fe propose to send trash by train to a landfill to be established on Santa Fe property near Amboy, midway between Barstow and the Arizona border.

Harvey said the companies behind both ventures have the financial resources to develop the projects themselves without public financing.

But before the companies can build the systems, Harvey said, they need commitments from cities willing to send their trash to the desert. Long-distance rail hauling would add $5 to $6 a month to trash disposal costs of homeowners, Harvey said.