Officials Predict Dire Effects If Lopez Canyon Dump Is Closed

If the controversial Lopez Canyon Landfill were shut down tomorrow, 4,000 tons of garbage a day would suddenly be thrust upon four other area dumps at a cost of $27 million a year to the city of Los Angeles, according to testimony presented Monday to air quality officials.

In testimony before a hearing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Assistant Los Angeles City Atty. Christopher Westhoff painted a grim picture of thousands of garbage trucks traversing the county’s freeways in search of alternative landfills if the Lopez dump is closed for allegedly emitting too much methane into the air.

The hearing board has been listening to testimony since April 27 about gas emissions from the 390-acre landfill near the community of Lake View Terrace. The emissions allegedly have greatly exceeded state standards in several “hot spots.” The hearing board will make the final decision about whether to close the dump in the next few months, based on whether members believe the city is adequately addressing the gas problems.

Sanitation officials testified during Monday’s hearing that they are working on a network of underground wells intended to funnel the gas produced in garbage to a system of burners that is supposed to harmlessly burn off the gas. The $4.2-million system is slated for completion by the end of September, said J. Malcolm Toy, the city’s principal sanitation engineer.

An environmental consultant for the city, Thomas Kalinowski, testified that despite measurements at the site, neither the methane nor a host of potentially toxic compounds found in trace amounts near the landfill were discovered in amounts great enough to pose health dangers to anyone living near Lopez Canyon Landfill.

Detectable levels of airborne chemicals near the landfill dropped considerably after July 11, when workers collecting air samples stopped reusing plastic collection bags that may have contained compounds from previous tests, Kalinowski said. When analyzed by an independent laboratory, other readings were lower than they were when a city laboratory performed the test.

Even the odors that neighbors say emanate from the landfill are harmless, Kalinowski said, and added that he would find the smell of horses in Kagel Canyon more objectionable than odors wafting from Lopez Canyon.

After Kalinowski cast doubt on measurements at the landfill, Westhoff tried to demonstrate that closing the landfill would create more problems than it would solve.

The city’s recycling program would almost certainly have to be shelved, and city trash trucks would drive 481,000 more miles each year to get to alternative landfill sites, he said.

“What would occur would clearly be a crisis,” warned Toy. “A lot of folks in the region would have trash remaining on their curbs.”

Keith Comrie, the city’s chief administrative officer, said in a written declaration that every city department would have to cut 5% of its work force to pay for closure of the landfill. Programs for the homeless, gang control and hazardous waste enforcement would have to be sharply reduced.

The hearing will continue Aug. 28.