Funds Voted to Sink Lopez Canyon Wells

The Los Angeles City Council voted 14 to 0 Tuesday to approve spending $700,000 to install up to 200 additional wells to ease methane gas emission problems at its Lopez Canyon dump in Lake View Terrace.

The council acted, without debate, amid growing criticism of the city’s efforts to expand operations at Lopez Canyon.

Last Friday, the landfill was sharply attacked as unhealthy by local elected officials and community activists from Lake View Terrace at a meeting before the variance hearing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The board was asked by the SCAQMD staff to require the city to sink 200 additional gas wells at the dump, which now has 43.

Tuesday’s action appeared to be a move by the council to satisfy the expected requirement.

The wells feed a system that collects and burns off gas that builds up in the landfill from decaying garbage.

Meanwhile, the city is seeking to sharply increase the landfill acreage at Lopez Canyon and to increase from 400 to 650 the number of truckloads of garbage trucked to the site each day.

Some community activists are urging the variance hearing board to limit how much garbage can be trucked to the landfill.

In a separate action last Friday, the city’s Board of Public Works, which oversees the city’s Bureau of Sanitation, voted to support a major expansion of dumping at Lopez Canyon.

But the board also urged that the controversial dump not be enlarged by as much as the bureau wanted.