Planning Official Threatens Closure of Lopez Landfill : Waste: Commissioner says he will move to revoke the permit. The Bureau of Sanitation seeks an extension to make the required improvements.

A Los Angeles commissioner threatened to shut down the city’s biggest dump after sanitation officials said they had failed to meet a deadline to make improvements to benefit its Lake View Terrace neighbors and asked for an extension until next year.

At a city Planning Commission meeting Thursday, Commissioner Fernando Torres-Gil warned that he would have “no qualms” about revoking the operating permit of the Lopez Canyon Landfill if it does not meet conditions imposed by the City Council to make the dump a better neighbor.

The dump, the only one owned by the city, receives 4,000 tons a day of garbage--an amount equal to two-thirds of all garbage collected by city workers and about one-third of the city’s total trash output.

Torres-Gil’s remarks came as the city’s Bureau of Sanitation asked the commission to extend its deadline until Jan. 31 for meeting five conditions of the permit. The permit had required the bureau to comply with the conditions by Aug. 2--nearly three weeks ago.

The commission, which is charged with enforcing the terms of the permit, set a hearing for Sept. 26 on the bureau’s request.

“We will want very concrete assurances and plans” for implementing the conditions of the permit, or “I will have no qualms about revocation,” Torres-Gil warned Mal Toy, a top official with the Bureau of Sanitation, the agency that operates the landfill.

Bob Rogers, the Planning Department’s chief hearing examiner, confirmed Friday that the commission has the authority to revoke the bureau’s landfill permit or to impose new conditions on it.

On Jan. 30, after a lengthy debate, the City Council granted the bureau a permit to continue operating the dump for five more years, but attached 22 conditions.

Gayle Johnson, an aide to Councilman Ernani Bernardi, expressed hope that an independent consultant--soon to be appointed by city officials to monitor the dump operation--will ensure that the bureau complies with the conditions.

The bureau has failed so far to meet conditions requiring it to erect buffers to reduce the noise from the landfill on two mobile home parks, to clean out debris washed from the slopes of the landfill into Bartholomaus Canyon that could result in flooding problems for homeowners, to replant the slopes of completed parts of the landfill, and to fully implement a plan to keep hazardous waste from being dumped at the landfill.

The request for the extension was sharply attacked at Thursday’s commission hearing by the Lake View Terrace and Kagel Canyon homeowners most affected by the landfill.

“Stop the B.S. from the B. of S.”--the Bureau of Sanitation--Lake View Terrace activist Lew Snow told the commissioners in urging them to revoke the dump’s permit.

In a letter to the commission, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) also urged the closure of the landfill. “Granting an extension only reinforces to the community that the bureau is above your orders--indeed, above the law,” Katz wrote.

Toy, a top sanitation official, blamed the delays in implementing the conditions on lack of money, adding that the bureau takes its responsibilities under the permit “very seriously.”

Two other planning commissioners, Suzette Neiman and Lydia Kennard, also expressed displeasure that the homeowners have had to police the bureau’s compliance with the permit.

“The people next door end up being the policeman and that’s unfair,” Neiman said after noting that the homeowners had complained a few weeks ago that several conditions of the permit were being violated, including the sound-wall requirement.

City Council’s Requirements for Landfill Los Angeles officials operating Lopez Canyon landfill in Lake View Terrace have asked for six more months to comply with the following five requirements, imposed by the City Council in an effort to make the dump less offensive to neighboring residents:

* Flood control--Cleanup of garbage debris from Bartholomaus Canyon to protect against flooding.

* Plant life--Plant vegetation around two portions of the canyon where dumping is completed and install an irrigation system to water the plants.

* Noise walls--Erect a six-foot-tall decorative masonry wall to protect two nearby mobile home parks from landfill operation noise.

* Waste control--Fully implement a plan to prevent hazardous waste from being inadvertently dumped at Lopez Canyon.

* Decommissioning--Finish preliminary plans for finally closing and covering the landfill.