Officials Agree on Landfill : Elsmere Canyon: As part of the agreement, L.A. city and county officials would forswear use of three canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Los Angeles city and county officials tentatively have agreed to open a huge landfill at Elsmere Canyon near Santa Clarita and to forswear the use of three canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains as dump sites in a milestone pact designed to end the divisive garbage wars between the two jurisdictions.

Announcement of the tentative agreement was made by Mayor Tom Bradley’s office late Friday afternoon. Officials involved in ironing out the 36-page agreement said they hoped it would be ratified next Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors and later by the Los Angeles City Council.

The principal vehicle for implementing the agreement would be a joint powers authority, a new public agency governed by a five-member board. The agreement released Friday refines an earlier draft approved in principle late last year by the City Council and supervisors.

One of the major goals of the joint powers authority would be to acquire and operate a 190-million-ton landfill at Elsmere Canyon--the same canyon just east of the Antelope Valley Freeway that BKK Inc., a solid waste management corporation, is currently negotiating to acquire from the U.S. Forest Service.

Once the canyon was acquired by BKK and the firm got all the approvals needed to operate a landfill at the site--including the vital environmental clearances--the joint powers agency would buy the canyon, reimbursing BKK for the cost of preparing the canyon, plus a $125-million payment to the company.

Under the agreement, the city of Los Angeles would be entitled to dump a significant share of its garbage at Elsmere.

Ron Deaton, a top city official involved in negotiating the agreement, said the plan will end years of warfare between the city and the county over landfills. “It puts behind the city and county a number of issues that have been very divisive,” Deaton said.

In a bid to appease the city of Santa Clarita, whose City Council opposes a landfill virtually in the new city’s back yard, the agreement calls for the city of Los Angeles to donate a 50-acre site in Saugus, owned by the city of Los Angeles, to Santa Clarita for a civic center complex.

Santa Clarita City Councilman Howard P. (Buck) McKeon replied that Santa Clarita is not interested in swapping land for dumps.

The agreement appears to be a victory for wealthy Westside homeowners and powerful political forces that have arrayed themselves against plans by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to open landfills in three canyons----Mission, Rustic and Sullivan--in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The agreement calls for the county sanitation districts, which own all three canyons, to pledge never to use Mission Canyon as a landfill and to turn over Rustic and Sullivan canyons to a public agency for use as a park or recreational facilities.

But Joe Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said the agreement leaves the county the option of selling Mission Canyon to a third party, possibly for development.

He noted that, unlike an earlier draft of the agreement, the text released Friday says that Mission Canyon will be spared a landfill only if a dump does indeed open in Elsmere Canyon.

That new provision is a “pretty radical change” that will pit the Westside against the dump’s opponents in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, said Rob Zapple, a founding member of Communities United for Safe Trash Management.

The agreement promises the city-owned Lopez Canyon dump above Lake View Terrace would close down within one year after Elsmere Canyon is opened. But the agreement provides that Lopez Canyon could be reopened if Elsmere is no longer able to receive trash.

Zapple, a long-time opponent of the Lopez Canyon dump, called the offer to shut down Lopez Canyon a deceptive effort to win the support of residents in the northeast San Fernando Valley. “We know darn well what they intend to do--keep both of them open as long as they can,” he said of Elsmere and Lopez canyons.

A press release from Bradley’s office hailed the agreement as leading to an “improved environment and more effective solid waste programs in the future.”

The city of Los Angeles, in return for reserved space at Elsmere, would pay $1 for each ton of garbage collected within the city--by city or private crews--and dumped at Elsmere. Fifty cents would go to the county sanitation districts for use in developing countywide solid and hazardous waste facilities and programs, and the other 50 cents would be paid into the county’s general fund.