Controversial Landfill to Be Closed : Sunshine Canyon: Area residents plan to celebrate the temporary shutdown, which will mean rerouting 4,500 tons of trash a day. Los Angeles is suing to prevent the dump’s reopening.

One of Los Angeles County’s largest garbage dumps will temporarily shut down when its city permit expires at 4:30 p.m. today, diverting trucks carrying about 4,500 tons of trash to other sites and further burdening the region’s landfills.

“It pushes us closer to popping the seams,” said Steve Maguin, chief of the solid waste management department at the county Sanitation Districts.

Sunshine Canyon Landfill, located above Granada Hills on land that straddles the border between the city and county, is expected to remain closed until at least January, when a section of the dump will be ready to receive trash under a county-approved expansion permit.

But a lawsuit filed against the county by the city of Los Angeles seeks to overturn the county’s expansion approval, which would create a situation Maguin and others described as far more serious. That suit is scheduled to be heard in Superior Court in mid-October.

The Los Angeles City Council has sought to permanently shut down the dump because of persistent protests from neighbors and environmentalists, who say the dump generates dust, odors and heavy truck traffic. Also, if expanded, it will destroy a lush oak forest.

Opened in 1958 by Browning-Ferris Industries, Sunshine Canyon Landfill has received more than 4,000 tons of garbage daily in recent years. Countywide, 43,000 tons of trash is generated daily.

During the months that Sunshine Canyon is closed, garbage will be rerouted to the three nearest landfills: Chiquita Canyon west of Santa Clarita, Bradley West in Sun Valley and the BKK landfill in West Covina, officials said.

The amount of garbage hauled daily to Chiquita Canyon more than doubled early this month, from 2,000 to 4,500 tons daily, as haulers switched landfills in anticipation of the Sunshine closure, said Rod Walter, manager of the Chiquita Canyon landfill. The Santa Clarita Valley dump can handle 5,000 tons of trash daily, he said.

The other two dumps have not yet experienced daily increases, officials said. Combined, the two sites can accept 5,000 more tons of garbage daily without making any special preparations, they said.

Sanitation officials said that the drought and the recession have softened the effect of the Sunshine closure. The drought has slowed plant growth and stalled landscaping projects, leading to less yard-trimming waste, and the recession has slowed building, shrinking construction debris. Maguin estimated those reductions at about 5,000 tons a day for the county.

“It’s the one good thing about the recession,” Maguin said. “If we had a strong economy right now and Sunshine closed, we’d have a real problem.”

Last February, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to nearly double the size of Sunshine Canyon landfill, onto more than 200 acres of the oak-filled canyon. Before disposal can begin there, however, trees and other vegetation must be removed and a landfill gas extraction system must be installed.

The Los Angeles City Council has denied BFI’s request to expand onto city land. In response, the county added a provision to its approval aimed at pressuring city officials to reconsider. The county stipulated that if the council does not approve future dumping inside city limits, all city garbage will be banned from the landfill in January, 1993.

Even if the county expansion of Sunshine Canyon proceeds as planned, the county could run out of landfill space in 1993, Maguin said. A proposal to add another huge landfill at Elsmere Canyon, near Santa Clarita, remains in preliminary planning stages, as do programs for using train cars to haul Los Angeles’ garbage to a remote, desert site.

Dump opponents see even a temporary closure as an important milestone in their quest to shut down the landfill. They are planning to celebrate this afternoon with a New Year’s Eve-style countdown at the landfill’s entrance.

“When the gates close we’re going to toot our horns and yell and everything,” said Mary Edwards, spokeswoman for the North Valley Coalition, a group of neighboring homeowners and environmentalists who have opposed the landfill expansion.

BFI officials, during a tour of the dump this week highlighted by stops at an oak tree nursery, used the closure as an opportunity to urge the city to reconsider the expansion and to rapidly resolve the lawsuit.

“You’re going to have 4,000 tons of refuse hitting the streets,” said Dean Wise, district manager of Sunshine Canyon. “It may put other landfills in violations of their operating permits.”

Community concerns about the expansion are “more psychological than anything else,” added Lynn Wessell, a consultant hired to handle public relations for BFI. “This is the one of the most remote landfill sites around. . . . We don’t impact anyone.”

But a spokesman for City Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the area, disagreed.

“They’ve been there 30 years, they’ve done their damage to the environment, they’ve been bad neighbors. . . . We’re not going to allow a permit,” said Greig Smith, Bernson’s chief deputy.

Smith said the county’s attempt at pressuring the city, which he called blackmail, had only succeeded in “damaging what was beginning to be a good working relationship between the city and the county” over waste disposal.