L.A. Pressured to OK Expansion of Sunshine Landfill : Dumps: The county wants Los Angeles to join it in expanding the Sunshine Canyon dump. In return, the city would gain access to the county’s proposed Elsmere Canyon dump.

Los Angeles County officials are pushing the city to approve expansion of the Sunshine Canyon landfill above Granada Hills as a price for granting city trash trucks access to the proposed new Elsmere Canyon garbage dump near Santa Clarita.

A draft “memorandum of cooperation” submitted to the city by the county earlier this week also threatens to block the city from using the county portion of Sunshine Canyon if city officials do not allow the landfill to expand onto adjacent land within city limits. Sunshine Canyon straddles the city-county line, but the only area where dumping is permitted at present is in the city.

County negotiator Robert K. Tanenbaum said Wednesday that county officials regard allowing expansion of the Granada Hills dump--onto additional land in both the city and county--as a critical issue in the negotiations to create a county and city dump at Elsmere Canyon.

“What we’re trying to do is come up with an integrated waste management plan for the residents of the county going out at least 50 years,” Tanenbaum said. He said expanding the Sunshine landfill is vital to the plan.

But Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents Granada Hills, called the county proposal totally unacceptable and said the City Council may have to have an “eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation” with county supervisors to sort out the problem.

Mary Edwards, a Granada Hills resident who is an officer with the North Valley Coalition, a group that has led opposition to expansion of the Sunshine dump, accused the county of playing “nonsensical hardball.”

Edwards said it was “an obscenity” for officials to push for an Elsmere Canyon landfill so near Granada Hills while seeking to increase dumping at Sunshine Canyon.

“We’re the most impacted community for both these landfills,” she said. “It’s just beyond belief that they would even think of doing that to one community.”

City negotiators, meanwhile, said the county memorandum of cooperation--the latest twist in convoluted land-swap negotiations involving local, state, federal and private interests--has been altered since it was given to them on Tuesday. They declined to detail what changes had been made but acknowledged that Sunshine Canyon’s future remains a major sticking point in the negotiations.

“The entire thing is bogus,” said Deputy Mayor Mike Gage, referring to the county’s proposed memorandum of cooperation.

Even if the city wanted to promise Browning-Ferris Industries--the firm that owns and operates Sunshine Canyon--support for future expansion, questions remain about whether such a promise would be legal.

“There’s no way we can legally encumber a future council action,” Bernson said.

The city is responsible for Sunshine Canyon in two ways: It oversees planning and land use changes at the dump through the routine city planning hearing processes, and the city Bureau of Sanitation polices the dump as the local agent for the state Waste Management Board.

Despite bitter objections from nearby Granada Hills residents, Browning-Ferris Industries is asking the county to change its general plan to allow a 542-acre expansion of the Sunshine Canyon dump. That land is next to land within the city limits now used for dumping.

The proposed expansion, the subject of a public hearing today at John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills, would accommodate about 70 million tons of refuse over a 20- to 30-year period.

If dumping were simultaneously allowed to increase on the city side, it would increase the capacity on the county’s side to 80 million tons.

Public attention has been focused on the city’s dwindling landfill capacity since earlier this year, when the state tried to scale back dumping at Lopez Canyon Landfill near Lake View Terrace, the only city-owned dump site.

Elsmere Canyon, with an estimated capacity of 190 million tons, is seen by city and county officials as the simplest and quickest solution to the problem. City and county sanitation officials have said Elsmere could handle the region’s trash for 30 to 50 years, if it is eventually granted an operating permit by the state Waste Management Board.

But making that proposal reality is no easy feat because so many interests are involved.

For example, most of the 1,494-acre parcel being viewed as a potential landfill site in Elsmere Canyon is owned by the U.S. Forest Service. The city and county hope to acquire the property by trading other lands the Forest Service would like to add to its Angeles National Forest.

During the past few weeks, there has been a flurry of activity on the land-swap proposal, which was initiated last February in legislation written by Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City).

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, in a bid to have environmental interests play a larger role in negotiations, made an independent pact with BKK Corp., the waste management firm that has rights to some of the land near Elsmere Canyon.

Part of that pact called for BKK to turn Elsmere Canyon over to the conservancy to prevent the county from using its eminent domain powers to acquire it. In return, BKK vowed to help the conservancy gain three canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains as parkland.

But the pact between the conservancy and BKK fell apart last Thursday when the county and BKK reached a separate agreement. Under the new tentative agreement between BKK and the county, the county will pay BKK $125 million for its land interests and will reimburse some expenses after the company obtains the permits it needs for the Elsmere dump.

That tentative agreement, presented to individual supervisors Wednesday, must be ratified by the Board of Supervisors before it becomes official.

Staff writer Gabe Fuentes also contributed to this story.