Dissimilar Allies Unite in Opposition to Landfill

To many in the Santa Clarita Valley, dump is more than a four-letter word.

It’s a controversial proposed 190-million-ton landfill in Elsmere Canyon--an idea so repugnant that it’s forging an unlikely alliance to fight it: local politicians, environmental groups and public relations purveyors.

“I have three kids who drink the water here,” said Pat Saletore, a Sierra Club activist and past president of the Santa Clarita Civic Assn. “This is not an acceptable risk.”

Santa Clarita Mayor Jan Heidt says it’s bad enough that the county and city of Los Angeles want to operate the proposed trash facility jointly on property that is now part of Angeles National Forest. But it also would have to be acquired in a complex land-swap deal that must satisfy the U. S. Forest Service and must withstand environmental reviews that could drag on for years.

Worse yet, she contends, the community is apathetic about the project, which would sit just outside Santa Clarita, about two miles northeast of where the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways converge.

“It’s puzzling to me that we haven’t captured the people of this community,” Heidt said at a recent City Council meeting. “They’ve got to take ownership of this issue.”

For that reason, the city of Santa Clarita plans to mobilize public opinion against it, not just in the Santa Clarita Valley but in the San Fernando and Antelope valleys, with a blitz of freeway billboards, bumper stickers and yard signs as well as a public relations campaign that could cost as much as $100,000.

Beyond that, Santa Clarita is planning to fight the landfill in court, city officials say.

But for now, the city intends to shoot it out in the streets.

“Our signs should be specific,” Councilman Carl Boyer said of the billboards. “They should say something like, ‘How would you like to have 2,400 trash trucks daily added to our Route 14 traffic?’ That would appeal also to the Antelope Valley commuters.”

Not surprisingly, the project’s backers have revved up their own firepower, arguing that the project is needed because there’s precious little landfill space left.

One backer, Ken Kazarian--president of BKK Corp., the Torrance-based refuse disposal firm that proposed the project and would operate it for Los Angeles County and city--contends that an epidemic of “NIMBYism” (‘Not In My Back Yard”) afflicts the Santa Clarita Valley.

“We’ve got a group of people up there who aren’t interested in trying to find solutions but in just sending it someplace else,” he said.

To Kazarian, “dump” is the wrong word. He prefers “landfill,” which he describes as “a highly engineered construction project. Ultimately, it’s going to be approved on its technical merits--nothing more and nothing less.”

The controversy heated up at the recent City Council meeting when Heidt contentiously singled out a BKK Corp. consultant, Tom Rogers, who sat near the back of the room, taking notes as council members plotted strategy for their campaign.

“It’s real hard having you in the room, Mr. Rogers,” Heidt snapped, “because it’s an unfair advantage that we can’t listen to BKK meetings and you can listen to ours . . .

“I’d like to have a public hearing and challenge Mr. Rogers to come and defend the BKK proposal. Any time. Any place.”

Pause.

“That’s not my job,” Rogers replied.

“What is your job?” Heidt asked.

No answer came.

The Santa Clarita City Council’s campaign stems from a perception that not enough people know where Elsmere Canyon is, let alone that a draft environmental review by the U. S. Forest Service and Los Angeles County may be ready for public comment in April, or that opponents contend that it would pollute an aquifer that, according to city officials, supplied as much as 90% of Santa Clarita’s drinking water last year during the drought.

“If you put up a billboard that just says, ‘Dump the Elsmere Dump,’ they’re not going to understand,” Marsha McLean, a community activist, told the council. “They don’t read newspapers. They don’t listen to the radio. They don’t know what’s going on.

“But when they see a sign that says, ‘Dump the Santa Clarita Valley Garbage Dump,’ and if we keep it simple, I think we’ll get a good reaction from it.”

What bothers some who sit on an Elsmere Canyon citizens committee is the perception of the Santa Clarita Valley.

“One public relations firm we met with,” McLean said, “was told, ‘Santa Clarita is a weak sister. It’s David vs. Goliath. The book is closed. It’s done. There’s no way they can fight it.’ That got our dander up a little bit, but that’s the word out there.”

At the heart of the dispute are environmental concerns about Elsmere Canyon, a rugged region of oak trees, brush, steep walls of rock and a stream. Opponents say the landfill would destroy a parcel of public land and pollute ground water that feeds public wells nearby.

“We’ll be out of this drought in a couple of years,” Saletore said, “and when all of that ground water is recharged, I don’t want a megadump sitting near it or on top of it.

“If my kids come down with cancer 50 years from now, I don’t want to have to look back and wish that people had the brains to say, ‘Don’t put that dump in!’ ”

Councilman Boyer says he worries about a synthetic liner that proponents say would be used to help contain the landfill. At the council meeting, he proposed mailing to residents postcard-sized swatches of the liner, with an inscription: “Would you like to have this between the Elsmere garbage dump and your water supply?”

“That,” Boyer said, “would scare the hell out of them. It ought to go first-class mail.”

For their part, BKK Corp. officials contend that the landfill would be surrounded by a “buffer zone” of at least three-quarters of a mile to what they say would be the “nearest potential homesite.” They add that liquids will not be part of the landfill’s refuse and that the protective liner will consist of a “system” of multiple liners augmented by materials including “compacted clay.”

Kazarian also questions environmental concerns raised by dump opponents about the 1,600 acres of Elsmere Canyon that would have to be exchanged by the Forest Service for private land of equal financial and natural resource value for the project to go through.

“That property is far from pristine--it’s nothing but chaparral, power lines and old roads,” Kazarian said. “I mean, Elsmere is not the crown jewel of the Angeles National Forest.”

The Forest Service-Los Angeles County environmental review expected to be drafted by April is required before a use permit can be granted, officials say. Ahead are two more steps--a discharge permit required by the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board and, finally, a solid waste facilities permit required by the California Integrated Waste Management Board.

“If we can stretch this thing out to the year 2000,” Saletore said, “BKK will get tired and go someplace else.”

For BKK’s part, Kazarian says, “We’re talking huge dollars--doubling and tripling those dollars the people now pay to have their trash collected--if we have to take it to the desert.”

Kazarian also talks about BKK Corp. commissioning its own campaign in the war of public relations--a point noted by Councilman Boyer when he told about attending a recent social event hosted by none other than BKK Corp.

“I went down the hall and bought my own drink,” Boyer said. “Afterward, somebody said, ‘Why didn’t you drink their liquor? They’d have that much less money to spend on Elsmere!’ ”