Lopez Dump Given 6 Months to Meet Operating Rules

Los Angeles city planners Thursday gave the agency that runs the controversial Lopez Canyon Landfill a 180-day extension of deadlines for meeting rules to make the dump less obnoxious and safer to nearby residents.

But if new deadlines for meeting nine conditions--including reducing truck noise, replanting dormant portions of the landfill and protecting nearby homes from flooding--can’t be met, the planners warned they would close the huge city-owned landfill.

The deadline waiver was granted by the Planning Commission on a 3-0 vote to the city’s Bureau of Sanitation, which operates the Lake View Terrace landfill where two-thirds of the city’s household waste is disposed of daily.

“I will vote for revocation in 180 days,” said Ted Stein, commission vice president. Commissioners Fernando Torres-Gil and Suzette Nieman issued similar warnings that they would move to revoke the landfill’s operating permit if it does not meet its new deadlines.

Bureau of Sanitation Director Delwin Biagi promised the commissioners “we’ll bust our tails” to comply.

The commission action extended the bureau’s deadline for meeting the conditions of its permit to April 22, 1992. Most of the conditions were supposed to have been met by Aug. 3.

But the commission action to extend the landfill deadlines, originally set in a permit issued in January, 1990, by the Los Angeles City Council, was sharply criticized as too lenient by local homeowner leaders and Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represents the area and has been a steady foe of the landfill.

“The community is the loser today,” Bernardi said. The commissioners, Bernardi complained, gave the landfill more time to comply with the rules of its permit than the Planning Department staff had recommended and the bureau itself had originally requested.

“They did not bring the bureau to heel today. They gave them another eight months to violate the rules,” said Rob Zapple, a leader of residents who live nearby in rustic Kagel Canyon, referring to the original deadline.

But Stein, who chaired Thursday’s meeting, defended the commission action, saying it was unrealistic to expect the bureau could meet a less lenient deadline extension to Jan. 31, 1992, that was recommended by the commission’s hearing examiner, Michael Davies.

Stein said in an interview that more troubling to him than any single one of the deadline violations was the “foot-dragging by the bureau when compliance seems so damned do-able in a short period of time.

“They’ve never really taken it seriously,” Stein said. “Their position is that they believe they have all the leverage on their side, that we’re not going to close the city’s only landfill.”

“But I think we’ll shut them down if they don’t meet our new deadline and we’ll let the council undo it on appeal,” Stein said.

The new deadlines apply to the bureau’s requirements for cleaning up silt and debris that has been washed off the landfill during rains into a catch-basin in Bartholomew Canyon; for installing an irrigation system to assist in the revegetation of unused portions of the landfill; for installing six-foot-tall sound walls to protect a mobile home park and a housing tract from heavy equipment noise, and for building a permanent structure for temporarily storing hazardous materials gleaned from the landfill.

Last summer, bureau officials asked for six-month extensions for complying with these conditions when they realized they would be unable to meet the Aug. 3 deadline.

Subsequently, the bureau has also been accused by homeowners of failing to comply with other conditions of the landfill permit, including those requiring disclosure of a complaint log maintained by the bureau and records about the tuneup of the landfill’s heavy equipment to meet air quality standards; the enlarging of a storm-water basin; the hiring of a noise expert, and the use of temporary barriers to dampen equipment noise at certain stages in the development of the landfill.