Planners OK Dump Permit for 10 Years : Environment: The tentative action allows the Puente Hills Landfill to expand eastward to within 2,000 feet of houses. Homeowners vow to continue their fight to close it.

The county’s planning agency Thursday tentatively decided to keep the Puente Hills Landfill open for 10 more years, allowing it to expand eastward through canyons near homes in Hacienda Heights.

The Regional Planning Commission will make its final decision May 5 on whether to renew the operating permit for the landfill, the second largest in the United States. It had been scheduled to shut down in November. Closing it would leave 60 cities in a lurch for a place to dispose of their trash.

Homeowners opposed to the expansion vowed to take their fight to the County Board of Supervisors.

The expansion “will destroy our canyons,” said Carol Mauceri, a member of the Hacienda Heights Improvement Assn.

The landfill’s managers, the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, had asked to keep the 1,365-acre landfill open until 2013 and to dump trash within 1,250 feet of back yards. The commission prohibited trash within 2,000 feet of homes.

At four public hearings earlier this year, hundreds of Hacienda Heights residents called for the landfill to be shut, claiming that the Sanitation Districts underestimated the environmental impact of the expansion.

Representatives for the Sanitation Districts applauded the Regional Planning Commission decision, but expressed concern that a 10-year operating permit could jeopardize a plan to transport waste by rail out of the county to private landfills. Steve Maguin, Sanitation Districts spokesman, said private landfill owners in Utah need a 20-year commitment to get financing.

The commission said an earthen barrier could be erected 1,750 feet from homes to block the landfill from residents. However, soil to cover the fill debris could be extracted 1,250 feet from homes.

The commission also voted to require the Sanitation Districts to compensate homeowners for any loss of property value and pay to purchase parkland in the Puente Hills.

“In all good faith, we have to come up with a decision we can live with. It is not going to be paradise on Earth,” said Planning Commission Chairman Richard Wulliger.

On May 3, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge will hear a lawsuit brought by homeowners, the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District and a developer, R. R. & C. Corp. of Industry, challenging the landfill’s environmental impact report as invalid.

The landfill expansion still requires the approval of the Water Resources Control Board and Integrated Waste Management Board.