Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Cities Assn. Panel Backs Elsmere Dump

The battle over the proposed Elsmere Canyon landfill took a new twist this week when a committee of the California Contract Cities Assn. recommended that the group endorse the project, incensing Santa Clarita officials who have long opposed the dump.

City officials said they viewed Wednesday’s vote as a stab in the back and plan to lobby the group’s 15-member executive board this weekend to prevent the Downey-based organization from taking further action in support of the proposed dump, which would place 190 million tons of garbage in Santa Clarita’s back yard.

“I felt like I had been mugged,” said Santa Clarita City Councilman Carl Boyer, the only member of the five-member resolution committee to vote against the recommendation.

“We’re shocked and we’re disappointed,” Assistant City Manager Ken Pulskamp said. “We’re members of the organization and in our mind the organization is about cities sticking together to help one another.”

The impetus for the vote, Boyer said, had come from San Dimas, whose own City Council on a 3-2 vote in April passed a resolution endorsing the Elsmere Canyon landfill proposal.

The resolution goes before the executive board of the California Contract Cities Assn. on Wednesday, and if it approved will go to the full membership in late May, Boyer said.

The city of Santa Clarita, the largest member of Contract Cities, had passed a resolution asking the association to come out against the proposed dump, Pulskamp said, but were turned down.

San Dimas Mayor Paul Dipple said finding sites for trash is an issue that must be addressed by groups such as California Contract Cities.

“Waste management needs to be addressed regionally and not just by the city of Santa Clarita,” Dipple said. “If there are areas in Los Angeles County or in the region that are suitable for landfills, they should be explored as one option in the total waste management picture.”

Dipple said the San Gabriel Valley, with four landfills, bears its fair share of Los Angeles County’s garbage and that Elsmere Canyon is the only current site available for a new dump.

Santa Clarita officials point out their valley has three landfills of its own and that a leak in an Elsmere Canyon dump could jeopardize underground water sources that provide more than half of the area’s water, while the San Gabriel Valley relies mostly on imported water.

In introducing the motion to his city, Dipple said he used a sample resolution given to him by the BKK Corp., the developers of the proposed landfill. BKK’s tactic, Boyer said, was an obvious attempt to play one city off against the other.

“That’s something you would expect them to do,” Boyer said. “They have a product that they’re going to sell, and of course if they do they will take a tremendous amount of money out of the taxpayers’ pockets.”

But BKK President Ken Kazarian said Santa Clarita’s accusation of manipulating one city against another is unfair.