Senate OKs New Process for State Approval of Dumps : Landfills: Sen. Ed Davis was unsuccessful in his bid to amend the measure to give cities a stronger voice.

A bill establishing a new process for winning state approval for garbage dumps has been passed by the state Senate, but without provisions sought by Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita) that would have given cities a stronger voice in such decisions.

Davis had hoped to amend the bill to give Santa Clarita more influence over plans to open a dump in Elsmere Canyon, just outside the city.

Davis unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill by Assemblyman Dominic L. Cortese (D-San Jose), which was passed by the Senate on a 22-12 vote Monday. The bill, AB 2296, goes back to the Assembly for final approval.

Davis and the Santa Clarita City Council objected to provisions of the bill that, they said, weakened the city’s chances of blocking the proposed Elsmere Canyon landfill. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Los Angeles City Council support the landfill, and an environmental impact report on the project is being prepared.

Under the Cortese bill, a landfill proposal would have to be endorsed by a majority of cities in a county before it could be submitted to the California Integrated Waste Management Board.

Charles Fennessey, a Davis aide, said this week that this provision makes it appear that Santa Clarita, or any other city opposed to a dump, could garner the support of other cities to block such a proposal. But the protection offered by that provision is largely illusory, he said.

The Cortese bill also says a city may vote against such a proposal only if it can prove that the dump would have adverse impacts within its own boundaries. Santa Clarita and Los Angeles are the only municipalities near Elsmere Canyon so the young city obviously could not rally other cities in the county to fight the proposed dump, Fennessey said.

Fennessey said Cortese’s bill contains some good elements, including provisions to safeguard the environment. But the guarantees of local involvement in the approval process do not really give cities a say in the selection of a landfill site, he said.

Passage of the bill was a political defeat for the Santa Clarita council, which had lobbied against the measure. Santa Clarita had tried to generate support for a bill by Davis, SB 2139, which would have made it more difficult for the city and county of Los Angeles to win state approval for their landfill plans.

In June, the Santa Clarita City Council took the unusual step of running full-page newspaper ads encouraging residents to write and telephone the members of an Assembly committee considering SB 2139. The bill had passed the Senate in May but was tabled after it ran into opposition in the Assembly.