NEWS ANALYSIS : Trash Doomsday Fails to Materialize; Officials Revise Warning to ’93 : Landfills: Recession, recycling and possibly faulty assumptions are cited as a predicted crisis has yet to engulf L.A. County.

Although pummeled this year by riots and drenched by floods, there is one calamity Los Angeles has managed to avoid.

The “trash crisis” is still a no-show. Its malodorous arrival--predicted to occur as early as 1991--has been delayed by the recession, recycling, and, perhaps, faulty assumptions that made the situation seem a bit worse than it was.

Dump opponents, who had claimed the “crisis” was invented to grease the way for new landfills, say they have been vindicated.

Undaunted, sanitation officials say the threat is far from over. In a revised estimate, they have moved the possible timing of the trash system’s crash to December of 1993--when permits for the Puente Hills Landfill, the county’s largest, are due to expire.

“I have mixed emotions” about the system holding up, said Steve Maguin, chief of solid waste management for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. “I’m glad we don’t have a public health crisis, thanks to the recession. On the other hand, I’m disappointed that we haven’t made any substantial progress” toward adding new landfill capacity.

Now, as before, sanitation officials say this is how the day of reckoning will arrive: Old landfills close without being replaced, increasing bottlenecks at remaining dumps. Trash haulers, languishing in ever-longer lines, eventually must wait so long to dump their loads that they miss their appointed rounds.

Suddenly, Monday’s trash is sitting around until Tuesday, and Tuesday’s until Wednesday or Thursday. Residents then face a health menace--complete with rats and flies and the smell of garbage rotting in the streets.

In a well-publicized report in August, 1990, the sanitation districts and county Department of Public Works presented what they called a “Time-to-Crisis Analysis.” The report’s very name sounded the alarm.

The report said the crisis could hit by 1991 unless landfills whose permits were about to expire were allowed to expand.

But the warning wasn’t heeded, at least not completely.

Although the largest of the dumps facing closure--the Sunshine Canyon Landfill above Granada Hills--was granted a new permit, it has been closed for nearly a year by a lawsuit contesting its expansion. Another key dump--the Azusa Western Landfill in the San Gabriel Valley--was closed unexpectedly last year by a legal challenge involving ground water protection.

The network of big public and private landfills in Los Angeles County had shrunk from 10 to eight. According to the county agencies’ gloomy analysis, disaster should have struck.

Instead, the system is getting by, thanks to declining volumes of trash and greater reliance on some of the remaining dumps. The weak economy, which has cut consumer buying and business activity, is one reason there is less trash.

“We’ve amazed ourselves at how well we’ve weathered what we thought was going to be a crash, and it’s got to do with a combination of recycling and recession,” said Joe Haworth, a spokesman for the sanitation districts.

Despite rapid population growth, landfill dumping in the county is about 10% below the level of five years ago--a trend sanitation officials never expected.

“We’ve seen substantial reductions in our waste flow” due mainly to the economic downturn, Maguin said. The slumping construction industry, usually a big waste producer, “is sucking air these days.”

Recycling also has relieved pressure on the dumps. Although officials had factored some recycling into their analysis, “there was some pessimism how fast people would be willing to recycle,” said Bill George, recycling coordinator for the sanitation districts.

Recycling is no longer just a way for Girl Scout troops to raise a few bucks. Responding to a state law requiring cuts in landfill dumping, at least 54 of the county’s 89 cities have launched curbside recycling programs, which also serve residents of unincorporated areas. Government agencies and businesses increasingly are taking up recycling in a big way.

For example, the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks annually recycles about 70,000 of the 108,000 tons of waste from its 350 parks and 13 golf courses, mostly by leaving grass clippings on the ground to cut disposal and watering costs.

Waste Management Inc., operator of the Bradley West Landfill in Sun Valley, is diverting about 80 tons of wood waste per day--much of it to a plant in the Central Valley where it is used as boiler fuel. And the sanitation districts--which run four big landfills--are recycling about 400 tons per day of tree trimmings and other green waste, officials with the districts say.

But some critics say there is another reason the dire forecast has failed to materialize: It was exaggerated for effect.

“They are trying to say the garbage crisis is worse than it is” to justify new dumps, said Marsha McLean, an opponent of the proposed Elsmere Canyon landfill east of the city of Santa Clarita.

“Their feeling was that unless they made the crisis seem bad enough, it would not be acted on in a timely manner,” said Mary Edwards of the North Valley Coalition, a group opposed to the Sunshine Canyon dump.

Sanitation officials deny hyping the forecast. The situation “is very doggone dynamic, and all we can do is estimate when we are . . . looking into the future,” said Mike Mohajer, solid waste manager for the county Department of Public Works.

However, a review by The Times of the crisis analysis also reveals a few questionable assumptions.

For one thing, the analysis assumed that the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in the Santa Clarita Valley--which currently takes more than 5% of the county’s trash--was to close in 1991 or this year. However, the dump’s land-use permit does not expire until 1997, and an official with the operator, Laidlaw Waste Systems Inc., said he did not know why officials thought the site was in danger of closing. Sanitation officials said they used the information they had at the time.

Moreover, the crisis analysis used an inflated figure for then-current trash dumping--which led to somewhat unrealistic estimates of future disposal needs.

According to the report, some 47,300 tons per day of garbage were being dumped in the county’s major landfills in 1990. But this base figure did not come from a current study of dumping. Instead, officials have acknowledged, they started with a 1987 figure, and extrapolated growth to 1990.

In fact, trash volumes were dropping, not increasing, during that period, as later county surveys revealed.

According to these surveys, actual landfill dumping in 1990 averaged just over 43,000 tons daily--nearly 10% less than was assumed. As a result, projections were unrealistically high for the “crisis” year of 1991, when dumping declined to a daily average of about 41,000 tons. The disposal rate for this year has been about the same.

Sanitation officials say the basic conclusion that more dump space is needed remains unchanged. And even with more recycling and a continued weak economy, they say the crunch could hit in 16 months if the Puente Hills Landfill is closed.

The dump, reportedly the largest in the Western states, takes about 12,000 tons per day, or 30% of the county total. If its expansion proposal is denied, said Haworth, “we think we can safely say the rest of the system cannot absorb it.”