Santa Clarita City Council to Seek Public’s Views on Elsmere Dump

Should Santa Clarita try to block the city and county of Los Angeles from opening a garbage dump just outside the city limits in Elsmere Canyon?

Or should it endorse the dump in exchange for money, land and the right to annex most of the surrounding Santa Clarita Valley?

Those are the questions the Santa Clarita City Council, which has remained neutral on Elsmere Canyon so far, wants to put before citizens at a public forum later this month. The council decided this week to hold the forum Jan. 29 to help it establish a policy on an increasingly ticklish political issue for the 2-year-old city.

“The public must understand that we are in a very precarious position,” said Councilman Carl Boyer III, referring to the politicking over the dump that has involved the Board of Supervisors, Los Angeles City Council, area congressmen, influential developers and a landfill firm.

Last month, the supervisors and Los Angeles City Council tentatively agreed to jointly develop a regional garbage dump in Elsmere Canyon, about two miles northeast of the junction of the Antelope Valley and Golden State freeways.

As part of the agreement, the city and county decided to offer Santa Clarita land and a yet-to-be-determined fee for each ton of garbage dumped in Elsmere if the young city pledges not to oppose the landfill. The agreement says the city of Los Angeles would give Santa Clarita a portion of the defunct 583-acre Saugus Rehabilitation Center, a city-owned property inside Santa Clarita.

Santa Clarita City Council members said the public forum would help them decide how to respond to the offer. For more than a year, council members have refused to oppose or endorse the Elsmere dump, saying they would not comment until an environmental impact report on the project is completed, possibly this spring.

However, council members have said repeatedly that they will not support the dump if it endangers the city’s ground water. They also have said that if a dump is opened in Elsmere, they want to win concessions from the city and county of Los Angeles.

At the public forum, the council will hear comments about two proposed resolutions that were presented to the council Wednesday night. The resolutions are drafts and could be revised or rewritten, City Manager George Caravalho said. “Maybe someone will surface with some concepts that we haven’t even thought about yet,” Caravalho said.

One resolution says Santa Clarita would oppose a landfill in Elsmere Canyon or anywhere else in the Santa Clarita Valley’s watershed, including scenic Towsley Canyon, another potential landfill site.

The second resolution says Santa Clarita would approve a garbage dump only if it is environmentally sound and if Los Angeles city and county meet 18 demands. It does not say whether the demands are negotiable.

The resolution asks for 12% of the fees collected at Elsmere Canyon and at the nearby Sunshine Canyon landfill. It asks that Santa Clarita be given a seat on the board of the joint-powers agency that would administer the Elsmere dump for the city and county of Los Angeles.

It also demands that the city of Los Angeles give Santa Clarita the entire 583-acre Saugus Rehabilitation Center and agree to provide access to Los Angeles water supplies if the dump spoils Santa Clarita’s water.

Santa Clarita also asks the city and county of Los Angeles to support its efforts to annex more than 100 square miles of county land surrounding the city.

Caravalho said copies of the 18-point resolution can be obtained at the city clerk’s office. After the public forum, the council could take several weeks to refine its final position on the Elsmere dump, Caravalho said.

The council chambers probably would not accommodate the large crowd expected to attend the forum, so city officials are searching for another site for the event.