Curbside Trash Recycling Plan Faces Long Delay : Environment: A lack of funds and refuse facility forces a postponement. It’s particularly galling to many people in a region renowned for its conservation consciousness.

A much anticipated curbside recycling program, scheduled to begin on the Westside of Los Angeles nine months ago, has been postponed indefinitely in most neighborhoods.

Curbside collection of glass, aluminum, plastic bottles and newspapers has already begun at more than 25,000 homes in Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Palms and Westchester as part of a pilot program by the city Bureau of Sanitation.

But another 125,000 homes in Los Angeles west of La Brea Avenue still do not receive the service because of a shortage of funds and the lack of a refuse facility on the Westside, Bureau of Sanitation officials said.

The inability to obtain easy-access recycling is particularly galling to many people in a region renowned for its environmental consciousness. Sixty percent of Los Angeles’ environmental groups make their homes on the Westside.

“Venice is such a progressive area,” Venice artist Jacquie Hud said. “It is kind of amusing that we are one of the areas that doesn’t have home recycling.”

Hud said she would dearly like to have a recycling truck come to her home, to spare her the “huge ordeal” of her monthly trips to a recycling center in Santa Monica.

Jacques Andre, a member of the Homeowners of South Westwood, is also frustrated by the delay.

“It’s disappointing, because I think most Westside residents really want it to occur,” Andre said.

He now takes his cans, bottles and newspapers to a local supermarket once a week. But, like many homeowners, he finds the ritual “annoying. . . . You go at some hours, and there is no one there to take it. So you have to haul it all home and then come back over again.”

Bureau of Sanitation officials said Westside residents have responded enthusiastically in neighborhoods where the program has begun--an observation confirmed by a Pacific Palisades activist.

“We just love it,” said Rita Dalessio, chairwoman of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. “People in this area are very interested in being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.”

Dalessio estimated that she recycles 95% of the material that she can into the 14-gallon bins supplied by the city, compared to 10% when she had to haul the stuff herself. “With children and other things taking priority, I just didn’t think it was that important,” she said. “But at my door, oh, it’s great!”

In the rest of the Westside, Santa Monica and West Hollywood offer extensive curbside recycling programs, and Beverly Hills and Culver City have neighborhood collection sites. Private trash hauling firms in Malibu offer curbside recycling in a few neighborhoods.

Los Angeles’ curbside recycling program applies only to single-family homes and apartments with four units or fewer. About 35% of the eligible homes citywide currently receive the service. The Bureau of Sanitation’s goal had been to have the program in place in the rest of the city by the middle of next year, at the latest, sanitation officials said.

But on the Westside, the deadline would be tough to meet. The city does not have enough money to hire the 40 extra drivers it would need to pick up recyclables in the area, said Sue Hayter, a spokeswoman for the city recycling program.

In other parts of Los Angeles, sanitation workers were freed to do the work because the program began simultaneously with the pickup of trash by automated garbage trucks. The special trucks pick up trash cans with a mechanical arm, meaning that they require only one crew member, instead of two. The extra workers can then be diverted to trucks that pick up recyclables.

But the Westside becomes entangled with its own environmental ethic on this score.

The automated trucks cannot work efficiently without a local transfer station, a drop-off point where garbage can be stored for a short time before it is hauled to more distant landfills. Unlike most of Los Angeles, the Westside does not have manufacturing zones, where trash transfer stations are typically located.

And Bureau of Sanitation officials said they expect homeowners groups to oppose most locations for storing trash in the area, even for short periods.

Without a transfer station, the city cannot use automated trucks. And, without automated trucks, personnel cannot be freed for recycling, said Drew Sones, manager of the city’s recycling and waste reduction programs.

Bureau of Sanitation officials hope they can break the logjam by putting the transfer station on vacant land near Los Angeles International Airport. The city Department of Airports is receptive, Sones said.

But there is another obstacle: Federal regulations prohibit waste facilities within five miles of airports: Dumps attract birds. Birds get sucked into jet engines. And that creates airplane maintenance and safety problems.

Sanitation officials say they may seek a waiver of the Federal Aviation Administration regulations because the city transfer station would be enclosed and not a bird lure.

But no matter what location is proposed, Hayter said, neighborhood opposition is likely. “It’s that not-in-my-back-yard thing,” Hayter said.

Asked when the problems can be resolved and automated trash collection and recycling begun, Sones said: “I really have no idea.”