Magazine Says Santa Clarita Used Children to Fight New Landfill

RefuseNews, a monthly magazine for anyone interested in garbage, is talking trash, according to the city of Santa Clarita.

The publication has accused the city of using Hitlerian tactics to enlist schoolchildren in its fight against a huge public trash dump proposed for nearby Elsmere Canyon. “Under the guise of petting furry animals,” a February editorial states, the city formed “Earth Kids,” an environmental club for children that actually is “nothing more than a kid-staffed front” in the campaign against the landfill.

“Political indoctrination of schoolchildren has been done before, in Nazi Germany, in the U.S.S.R. (until recently) and now in the schoolrooms of Santa Clarita, California,” the column told the magazine’s 5,000 subscribers in the western United States.

City officials took umbrage at the comparison Monday, saying the topic of landfills was only briefly discussed during a two-week “Earth Kids” pilot program for 85 elementary school students in December. The organization is an after-school club scheduled to begin meeting in three city parks this spring, they said.

“Nazi Germany, that’s going too far,” said city spokeswoman Gail Foy. “Those comments are bogus.”

Foy acknowledged that the city has set aside about $250,000 this year to fight the 190-million-ton dump, but said none of the money is being spent on Earth Kids.

The club was proposed by the Pride Committee, a local volunteer group composed of some of the city’s most vehement opponents of the proposed dump. During the pilot program in December, children learned how to make recycled paper, take care of pets, conserve water, recycle trash and protect themselves from strangers, said Pat Saletore, a member of the volunteer group.

The topic of landfills arose once, Saletore said, in the context of a lesson given by a representative of the Raptor Rehabilitation and Release Program, a nonprofit group that cares for wounded predatory birds. Saletore said the representative told the children that landfills can displace animals.

“The entire focus of this program was hardly on the evils of landfills, and the children would hardly classify us as fascists,” Saletore said.

However, Saletore said PRIDE volunteers did tell a reporter from a local newspaper that they hoped the program would make the children more aware of the impact of the landfill.

John Waddell, editor of RefuseNews and author of the editorial, said Monday that he grew alarmed when he saw the newspaper story. The city should create a more balanced program, including explaining the necessity for landfills, he said.

But Mayor Jill Klajic, a staunch opponent of the dump, said the program “should bring attention to the fact that landfills are a threat to this community.”