L.A. Initially OKs Elsmere Dump Plan : Landfills: A debate over treatment of rich and poor areas precedes the council’s tentative decision to join the county in building a dump in Santa Clarita Valley canyon.

After a sharp debate over past unequal treatment of rich and poor areas in the selection of landfill sites, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday tentatively approved a pact with the county to jointly develop a regional garbage dump in Elsmere Canyon in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Other issues raised during the 90-minute debate were concessions, if any, that would be made to the city of Santa Clarita and whether the new dump would take the steam out of city recycling efforts.

Los Angeles County officials say that opening the giant landfill, situated just east of the junction of the Antelope Valley and Golden State freeways, will go a long way toward solving the region’s trash problems for 40 years or more.

Sanitation officials say they are hopeful that the 190-million-ton landfill could be in operation by 1995.

The council’s 11-2 vote directed negotiators for the city and county to go back to the table to develop a binding agreement for consideration in a few months.

Triggering a sharp disagreement among council members is the fact that the pact designates city-owned Lopez Canyon near Lake View Terrace to receive trash until Elsmere is open, yet permanently bans any dumping in Mission, Rustic and Sullivan canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Noting that the three Westside canyons, purchased by the county as dump sites, are in high-income areas, Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represents moderate- and low-income areas near Lopez Canyon, said the city-county agreement was “based on economic class.”

The Westside “creates as much junk and rubbish as my district, and they should share the responsibility,” Bernardi said.

Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represents a West Valley district, said that Bernardi “seems to have fixated on Rustic and Sullivan canyons and the fact that we are not making landfills out of these pristine canyons.”

Picus and others argued that rather than providing an incentive to keep Lopez open, developing a new, larger dump nearby would provide the means to close Lopez, as the city repeatedly has pledged to do.

Westside Councilman Marvin Braude said the city should develop “no more urbanized landfills,” such as the three Santa Monica Mountains canyons.

In contrast, he said, Elsmere Canyon is “more isolated from residences than any other landfill site we have considered.”

Bernardi’s motion to reopen Mission, which was closed after receiving 26 million tons of trash, and retain the other two as possible future dump sites drew only four affirmative votes.

Santa Clarita officials, whose city border is 1 1/2 miles from the dump, have denounced the plan, including a provision that would give them a dumping fee of a nickel per ton.

Santa Clarita Mayor Jan Heidt called the fee “just crumbs.”

Nor have Santa Clarita officials expressed enthusiasm for a provision under which Los Angeles would deed to the suburban city of 147,000 a portion of the now-closed Saugus Rehabilitation Center, which Santa Clarita wants for a civic center and a park.

Ronald Deaton, the Los Angeles City Council’s assistant chief legislative analyst, said the concessions were included in the hope that Santa Clarita would not oppose the project.

But Deaton said he could see no way that Santa Clarita could block development of the dump.

Several Santa Clarita residents spoke in opposition to the plan Friday.

“We are going to oppose this any way we can,” said Marsha McLean of the Elsmere Canyon Preservation Committee. “This is supposed to be a non-hazardous landfill . . . There is no such thing.”

Several council members took issue with statements by pro-recycling activists that the development of Elsmere will take away the city’s and county’s incentive to recycle.

“We’re going to recycle. That’s all there is to it,” said Picus, a longtime advocate of separating reusables from trash.

She and others noted that a recently passed state law requires cities and counties to reduce trash dumped in landfills by 25% by 1995 and by 50% by the year 2000.

About 95,000 of the city’s 720,000 households are participating in a voluntary recycling program that started in 1985.

The program is expected to be made mandatory and expanded citywide within a few months, with the goal of reducing trash by about 40% in three years.

Most of the proposed Elsmere landfill must be acquired from the U.S. Forest Service, which owns the canyon as part of Angeles National Forest.

The county has reached agreement with the Forest Service to swap the Elsmere land for property in the San Gabriel Mountains.

A separate tentative agreement has been reached between the county and BKK Corp., a giant waste disposal firm, which owns about one-third of the land needed for the dump.

The county has offered to pay BKK $125 million to relinquish its interests in Elsmere.