Plan OKd to Collect Household Chemicals

In a campaign to prevent the illegal dumping of toxic materials in the city’s Lopez Canyon landfill at Lake View Terrace, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Friday to spend $1 million to collect household hazardous wastes.

The plan calls for holding household hazardous waste “roundups” in four areas of the city--Lake View Terrace, Granada Hills, Hollywood and West Los Angeles--during the next five months.

At the four daylong roundups, residents will be asked to bring their household hazardous wastes to a site staffed by specially trained crews that will dump them at landfills designed to accept toxic material. Such products--which include paint, motor oil, insecticides and fingernail polish--cannot legally be placed in residential garbage.

The city has conducted 10 such roundups citywide during the past two years, but the last one was held more than six months ago.

Last week, the council’s planning committee agreed to make it a condition of approving an expansion of the city’s Lopez Canyon landfill that the city revive the household hazardous waste pickups. Without such a city-sponsored plan, residents have little recourse but to include hazardous waste in their residential trash, which ends up in Lopez Canyon.