County Planners Delay Vote on Dump Expansion : Landfills: The commissioners decide to take a closer look at alternatives to the Sunshine Canyon site. Dump opponents call the action a ‘partial victory.’

Los Angeles County planning commissioners Thursday postponed indefinitely a vote on a proposal to expand the Sunshine Canyon landfill near Granada Hills after a county attorney told them alternatives to the dump need closer examination.

The Regional Planning Commission voted 4 to 0 to delay its decision so the landfill’s environmental impact report can be revised to more closely examine other dump sites. These include Elsmere Canyon north of Sylmar and the unused portion of Sunshine Canyon--which straddles the city limit--within the jurisdiction of the city of Los Angeles.

Browning-Ferris Industries is asking the county to allow the Sunshine Canyon landfill, which now occupies 230 acres within the city, to expand onto 542 acres of unincorporated county territory and is considering expansion onto its land in the city as well.

The proposal has generated opposition from environmentalists and homeowners who say it would destroy a valuable oak forest within an area the county has designated as ecologically significant.

Dump opponents called the delay a “partial victory,” especially because it came after the county’s chief planner, James E. Hartl, had recommended the commissioners approve the expansion on county land.

“It’s encouraging because I don’t think this project will survive the kind of scrutiny that is required,” said Jill L. Ratner, staff attorney for Citizens for a Better Environment.

Browning-Ferris spokesman Mark Ryavec played down the importance of the delay. The Planning Commission asked only “to fine-tune portions of the EIR, and we’re happy to do that,” Ryavec told radio station KNX.

The Planning Commission appeared to be on its way toward making a decision, as Commissioners Clinton Ternstrom and Lee Strong said they were leaning toward giving Browning-Ferris a 10-year permit to dump 6,000 tons a day in the portion of Sunshine Canyon under county jurisdiction.

But that possibility was suspended after Charles J. Moore, principal deputy county counsel, told the commission that the landfill’s draft environmental impact report did not sufficiently study the feasibility of other landfill sites.

“A more thorough analysis of the long-term alternatives, short-term alternatives and cumulative impacts needs to be done,” Moore said. “A great deal more work needs to be done.”

State law requires any development proposal that would have a significant effect on the environment to undergo an environmental impact investigation, which must be certified by the responsible government agency and must thoroughly study alternatives.

The county’s general plan also requires the consideration of alternatives whenever development is proposed in an area deemed ecologically significant, such as Sunshine Canyon.

Moore said the potential for starting new landfills, reopening or expanding dumps and dumping on the part of Sunshine Canyon within the city of Los Angeles were not adequately discussed by the environmental report. County planners have recommended that the city be shut out of the expanded Sunshine Canyon dump on county land unless the city permits dumping on the part of the canyon within city limits.

In addition, the county has yet to complete an environmental review of five possible new landfill sites: Blind Canyon, Browns Canyon, Elsmere Canyon and Towsley Canyon in the county’s jurisdiction, and a landfill in Mission, Rustic and Sullivan canyons in the city of Los Angeles.

Moore’s suggestion about other sites prompted Strong to note that those sites have opponents who are “already gearing up to fight them,” making their eventual approval uncertain.

Jack R. Michael, the county’s special assistant for waste management programs, said the county’s best strategy is to create as much landfill space as possible.

“The alternatives are all the sites, in the ideal,” Michael told the commission. “Let’s provide that resource. We can control ultimately whether it is used or not.”

But Ratner, of Citizens for a Better Environment, said outside the hearing room that the intent of state environmental law is not to allow individual projects to be “rammed through piece by piece.”

“That is what is going on here,” Ratner said.

The county Board of Supervisors will make the final decision about the proposed landfill expansion.