2-Barrel Lid Put on Trash Pickups : Waste disposal: The containers in the East Valley program are free. But residents will pay a premium for any overflow.

Los Angeles sanitation officials Monday began putting into effect an automated garbage-collection program that will strictly control the way residents dispose of trash and limit the amount they can throw out for free.

The effect of the program will be to create a financial incentive for householders to sort recyclable materials--aluminum cans, newspapers and glass--and turn them in separately, in line with a state-mandated policy to encourage recycling.

When implemented throughout the city by 1993, it will be the largest curbside recycling and automated refuse-collection program in the country, covering 720,000 households, sanitation officials said.

Beginning next week in the eastern San Fernando Valley, garbage will be collected by trucks equipped with hydraulic arms to lift and dump the two specially designed 60-gallon containers that are being distributed free this week to residents of the area.

Under the program, residents who cannot fit all garbage into the two barrels will have to lease larger containers from the city. Under a proposal before the City Council, the fee would be about $5.35 a month to replace a 60-gallon can with a 90-gallon one, $8.60 a month for a third 60-gallon can and $12.60 a month for a 90-gallon third can. Broken trash barrels will be replaced free by the city.

Residents who need additional containers on a onetime basis--for events such as cleaning out the garage or dealing with party debris--will be able to buy 30-gallon bags or a tag they can attach to one of their old garbage cans, also for a proposed fee of $5 per bag or tag.

By the beginning of May, officials hope to have the trucks, which are operated by a single worker who never leaves the cab, collecting trash from 30,000 households in Lake View Terrace, Pacoima, Sunland, Tujunga, North Hollywood, Universal City and Van Nuys.

The program will spread to the north-central area of Los Angeles in the summer and to the remainder of the East Valley before the end of the year, sanitation officials said.

The program will go into effect in the West Valley in 1992, sanitation officials said. They plan to have the entire city under the program within three years.

The automated refuse-collection program is part of the city’s effort to comply with strict state recycling mandates, which require municipalities to reduce landfill deposits by 25% by 1995 and 50% by 2000.

Each household will also receive--eventually--a 14-gallon bin in which to place aluminum cans, bottles and newspapers that will be picked up by other trucks. By limiting to two barrels the amount of trash a house can dispose of, officials hope that residents will make maximum use of the recycling bins and that two cans will be sufficient for the remainder.

There will be no limit on recyclable materials picked up, and additional recycling bins can be requested at no additional cost.

Residents of the East Valley area covered by the change that began this week, however, have been caught in a glitch in the changeover. There are not enough drivers to begin collecting recyclables there immediately, said Gyl Elliott, spokeswoman for the city Bureau of Sanitation’s Recycling and Waste Reduction Division.

Although the recyclable collections will not begin in that area until the fall, households there will still become subject to the fee for over-quota trash collections after a 30-day grace period, she said.

Pilot programs have been in effect in South-Central Los Angeles and El Sereno since September, but Monday’s action in the East Valley kicked off widespread implementation.

“What we’re trying to do is bring home to people that landfill is an obsolete way of disposing of our trash, and recycling is where we’re heading as a city and a nation,” said Bill Knapp, a Bureau of Sanitation manager.

“I think Los Angeles has always been on the cutting edge of new concepts when it comes to solid waste,” he said.

But some residents of Lake View Terrace, where workers started delivering the cans Monday, were not as enthusiastic.

“They gave me two barrels for a half-acre lot,” said Seymour Keyes, who had 12 30-gallon cans filled with yard trimmings and household garbage bags lining his driveway. “I think the whole thing is a scam.”

Keyes and many of his neighbors live on large lots zoned for residential and agricultural use, and several own horses. They generate more trash than the average suburban house. He said a neighbor planned to use one of the containers to dispose of horse manure.

The fees also annoyed some residents accustomed to free trash collection.

“If they’re going to get money from me, I don’t like it,” Sal Pujol said. “What I’m going to do is get me a trash compactor.”

The automated collection trucks are more efficient than front-loading trucks used by the sanitation department, and therefore will reduce the total number of trucks needed to collect garbage, officials said. Trash collectors will not be laid off but transferred to the city’s recycling program as truck drivers.

“With the same staff, the same facility, we can add the service of recycling,” Knapp said.

Officials also expect the automated trucks to dramatically reduce the number of back and shoulder injuries to sanitation workers because the hydraulic arm eliminates the heavy lifting that has until now been part of the job.

“The truck does all the hard work now in our refuse collection,” recycling manager Drew Sones said.

That makes the new trucks popular for the sanitation worker on the street.

“I trained on it last week for two days and I sure didn’t want to come back to this,” Craig Bierlein said as he emptied cans in front of a Foothill Boulevard house into the bin on the front of his one-man collection truck. Because Bierlein has only been with the department for three years and is far down the seniority list, he expects that it will be two years before he can be assigned to one of the automated trucks. He can hardly wait, he said.

“I wake up every morning sore. I don’t know what it’s like to wake up every morning without cramps and sore muscles,” he said. “But once we get these new trucks out, I think I’ll know.”

Program Basics

* Limits amount of trash that can be thrown out for free.

* Charges a fee to householders who exceed the two-barrel limit.

* Creates financial incentive for sorting recyclables.

* Uses trucks operated by one worker who never leaves the cab.