Officials Deny Promise to Close Lopez Canyon Landfill in 1992

City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation officials, in an environmental document filed Thursday, denied promising to close the Lopez Canyon Landfill in Lake View Terrace by 1992--although the dump’s foes have long contended that such a pledge was made.

“The bureau has reviewed its files and finds no record of the bureau stating that the Lopez Canyon Sanitary Landfill will close in 1992,” the final version of an environmental impact report stated. The report was filed as part of the agency’s effort to nearly double garbage dumping at the site.

Dump opponents, including the northern San Fernando Valley’s elected leadership, for years have based their arguments on statements that the bureau had promised to close the city-owned dump by 1992.

The bureau’s disavowal appears in Volume 4 of a five-volume environmental document. In that volume, allegations and complaints of the landfill’s foes--raised at public hearings last Oct. 23 and 27--are printed verbatim, followed by the bureau’s replies.

The major findings of the report have been known since last year--when its first three volumes were made public--and support the bureau’s plans to expand the landfill’s capacity, extending its operational life to the year 2005.

During a vitriolic public hearing in October, Councilman Ernani Bernardi, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) and Assemblywoman Marian La Follette (R-Northridge) repeatedly stated that there had been a bureau pledge to close Lopez by 1992.

Bernardi insisted that the landfill “be closed, as promised, by 1992.” Katz said: “The landfill ought to be closed in 1992. That was the promise, and the city ought to live up to it.”

The environmental impact report quoted the department as saying it could find no grounds for such a belief. “Discussions with other agencies and departments of the city have also been unsuccessful in uncovering the origin of the closure date of 1992,” the report stated. The report was prepared by a private consulting firm.

However, the report said an unauthorized statement by a bureau official might have created expectations of a 1992 closure. “The source of this ‘promise’ may have come from a bureau staff member at a public meeting. If this is the case, it is undocumented and unfortunately not an official statement of the Bureau of Sanitation or a requirement in existing permits for the facility,” the environmental document stated.

Bernardi could not be reached for comment. Members of the lawmaker’s staff, however, said they were not certain how the belief in a 1992 closure originated. David Mays, Bernardi’s chief deputy, said residents have believed in such a promise for years. Recently, charges about “broken promises” have helped fuel residents’ anger as they seek to block the proposal to extend Lopez Canyon’s life by 15 years.

Mays said he thought he recalled a bureau official once admitting to a group of residents that he had mistakenly promised, on another occasion, that the dump would be closed by 1992. But Mays said he could not recall the official’s name.

Phyllis Hines, a homeowner activist, conceded that she could not recall a concrete promise to close the landfill by 1992 being made by a city official. Rather, what she said she recalled were extrapolations that showed that the dump--given its current capacity and the rate of dumping at the site--would be filled by 1992.

“It’s a promise, a commitment about the capacity of the landfill that they’re breaking now,” she said, referring to the bureau’s efforts to expand the existing capacity of the landfill, thus extending its life.