City-County Plan to Open Garbage Dump at Elsmere Canyon Attacked : Environment: Opponents contend that the proposal, unveiled 15 days ago, contains too few incentives to recycle.

Environmentalists on Friday attacked a plan by the city and county of Los Angeles to open a huge garbage dump at Elsmere Canyon near Santa Clarita, saying it contains too few incentives to recycle.

The plan will result in a “quick and unnecessary filling up of Elsmere Canyon,” Rod Miller, legislative director for Sacramento-based Citizens Against Waste, told a Los Angeles City Council panel reviewing the proposed pact.

The Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee heard two hours of similar criticism from homeowners and environmentalists about the plan but postponed a vote on whether to endorse it until Tuesday. The full council is set to consider the plan April 17.

The plan, unveiled 15 days ago, is the product of intense negotiations between the city and county. It is seen as a solution to the city’s problem of finding space to dispose of garbage as existing dumps fill up.

The plan calls for the city and county to set up a joint powers agency to deal with the area’s landfill needs. A top goal of this new agency would be to open a landfill at Elsmere Canyon.

In the event that Elsmere were opened, the county would be required under the agreement to drop plans to open landfills in Rustic, Sullivan and Mission canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains. The city would also close--after one year--its controversial Lopez Canyon Landfill in Lake View Terrace.

But numerous critics complained that the estimated fees of $18 to $20 per ton to be charged waste haulers using Elsmere, including the city’s Bureau of Sanitation, are too low and thus encourage the overuse of landfills.

Higher fees would act as an inducement to recycling and waste reduction, testified Barbara Fine, chairwoman of the city’s Solid Waste Citizens Advisory Council.

But council President John Ferraro, who sat through Friday’s debate even though he is not on the

committee, said: “It’s up to us to keep the fees low because we in the city pay the fees out of our general fund. Keeping the fees low is one of the things we’ve been fighting for.”

Meanwhile, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, a member of the Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee, proposed that the council enact a law that would encourage private waste haulers to recycle their garbage before dumping it at Elsmere.

Galanter’s proposal won the cautious support of some environmentalists, including Jill L. Ratner, staff attorney for Citizens for Better Environment. Ratner called the Galanter plan a welcome first attempt by the city to impose recycling limits on private waste haulers.

Private haulers--serving apartments and businesses--collect about two-thirds of the trash generated each day in the city of Los Angeles.

A citywide recycling program, still months from being implemented, would apply only to waste collected from single-family homes by the Bureau of Sanitation. That amounts to about one-third of the 18,000 tons of waste generated in Los Angeles each day.