$3.25 Million OKd for Landfill : Lopez Canyon: The Los Angeles City Council approved funds in part to reduce the amount of methane gas leaking from the dump.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to spend $3.25 million on improvements to the Lopez Canyon dump, including steps to reduce the amount of methane gas leaking into neighboring areas of Lake View Terrace.

The council voted 12 to 0 for a motion by Councilman Ernani Bernardi, a critic of the city-owned landfill, to authorize the expenditure, which was required by an agreement between the city and a state air pollution agency to clean up the landfill.

Bernardi said later that although the plan funded Tuesday may satisfy the staff of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, it may not meet all the concerns of the district’s board of directors or Lake View Terrace residents.

“It’s going to buy us some lessening of the methane gas spewing into the community and problems of wind-blown trash,” he said.

Bernardi represents the area surrounding the landfill, which is owned and operated by the city Bureau of Sanitation.

The AQMD staff recently cited the city for 28 separate violations of state emission standards for methane gas at Lopez Canyon, exposing the city to up to $700,000 in fines.

A district board has been holding hearings since April on conditions at the landfill, which the city is seeking to expand to accommodate more garbage.

Last week, city and AQMD staff employees said they had reached an agreement to settle the air agency’s complaints. Part of the agreement included the cleanup plan adopted Tuesday by the council. The amount of civil fines against the city for the emission violations is the subject of separate negotiations.

Elliott Sernel, an AQMD attorney, said last week that the cleanup plan is expected to bring the landfill into compliance with state laws governing methane gas emissions by the end of the year.

The agreement has been sharply criticized by homeowners who want to close the dump and their political allies, such as Assemblyman Richard Katz, D-Panorama City, who called for rigorous scrutiny.

Sernel has defended the agreement, saying “substantial conditions are being imposed on the city” that will solve gas and odor problems at the dump.

Of the funds voted Tuesday, $2.2 million is to be used to expand the landfill’s existing but inadequate methane gas collection system, which captures the gas--a byproduct of the underground deterioration of organic material--in pipes and burns it.

The remaining money will be used to buy additional equipment for burying garbage at the landfill.