Panel Backs Citizens’ Inspections of Lopez Canyon Dump

A Los Angeles City Hall advisory panel endorsed a plan Thursday to provide for monthly inspection of the city-owned Lopez Canyon garbage dump in Lake View Terrace by representatives of local homeowners and an aide to City Councilman Ernani Bernardi.

But the 15-member Solid Waste Citizens Advisory Committee was advised by city Bureau of Sanitation officials that health codes may prohibit visits to landfills by untrained people.

On-site monitoring of the landfill was championed by Phyllis Hines, Bernardi’s appointee to the committee that has 15 members, each appointed by a different council member. The landfill is located in Bernardi’s district.

The inspection proposal was approved on an 11-3 vote and sent to the City Council for approval.

Under the plan, the private team would be escorted through the dump by a county Department of Health inspector. Although the private citizens would have no power to enforce regulations, the inspector accompanying them could.

Supporters of the plan said the citizens could act as watchdogs for Lake View Terrace and Kagel Canyon residents who have long complained that the landfill is a source of dangerous gases, dust, odors and noise.

The dump’s opponents cite incidents such as the disclosure this week that the city’s Bureau of Sanitation, the landfill’s operator, has quietly agreed that its system of collecting methane at the dump and burning it off is inadequate.

They also note that state officials warned March 1 that methane gas levels at the site exceeded state permitted concentrations, that the city’s gas detection equipment has been faulty, and that a city dump worker may have been temporarily sickened by gas at the site.

On Wednesday, the city’s Board of Public Works is set to review again a controversial proposal to expand the landfill so that it can be used until the year 2005 and accept 650 truckloads of trash per day. Without the expansion, the landfill--which now takes 400 truckloads per day--will have to close by 1992.