Residents Threaten Suit to Close Landfill : Waste disposal: BKK wants to stay open as long as 2006 and alter some ridgelines. Homeowners, who fear a loss of property values, want a 1985 agreement upheld.

Warning City Council members that their political futures are on the line, West Covina residents living near the BKK landfill vowed to sue the city if it does not uphold a 1985 agreement with the landfill operator to close the dump in 1995.

Several West Covina residents and developers threatened to sue the city during a hearing on BKK’s future Monday night. All said their property values will plummet if the landfill stays open past 1995.

The council conducted the five-hour meeting to hear public testimony on BKK’s plans to stay open as long as 2006 and to slice ridgelines at the dump. BKK says it needs to lower ridgelines to obtain more dirt to cover trash. The council directed city staff to work with BKK on a new development plan for the dump that would preserve existing ridgelines.

The city and BKK signed an agreement in 1985 calling for the dump, which contributes about $5 million a year in taxes to the city, to close once commercial development is under way on the site or in 1995, whichever came first.

BKK officials say the 1995 deadline is moot because the city has failed to process development documents. Furthermore, they say the memorandum of understanding they signed is not a legal contract. The city, however, contends that it is. Both sides say the matter is likely to be resolved in court.

BKK officials have said that they would be willing to discuss an amendment to the 1985 agreement that would allow a later closure date, but they have not formally requested such talks with the city.

Meanwhile, the city is planning its financial future assuming BKK will close in 1995. No council member in recent public meetings has suggested that the city should consider amending the 1985 agreement with BKK.

However, residents fear that council members might be tempted to consider such an amendment in order to buy the city more time to find other sources of revenue during a depressed economy.

Referring to a possible council decision this summer on whether to allow the dump to stay open past 1995, resident Robert Brown told the council Monday night that “this will be the defining moment in your political career. . . . Your action could make you famous throughout the country.”

The council, he and other residents have warned, will face a class-action lawsuit by many of its citizens if it allows the dump to remain open past 1995.

And don’t count on just one suit, said Susan Homme, an organizer of the 150-member Residents Against Contamination in Our Neighborhoods, a coalition of West Covina, Walnut and Valinda residents. She said the group has sought advice from a lawyer, who recommended that a variety of homeowners associations around the dump file separate class-action suits.

“We were all sold homes with the assumption that the landfill would close in 1995,” Homme said. “We all had to sign a Prospective Homebuyers Awareness Package,” in which subdivision developers disclose a variety of information, including the city’s 1985 agreement with BKK for the landfill to close no later than 1995.

However, there is more than one version of that prospective home buyers information package, the most recent of which states clearly that the city’s agreement with BKK is amendable, City Atty. Betsy Hanna said. The city reviews the developers’ packets before residents receive them.

She said the city never made a legal promise to close the dump in 1995, although there has been no indication during recent council meetings that council members desire anything different. The 1985 memorandum contains a provision allowing both sides, upon mutual agreement, to change the terms of the contract.

That potential for change in the agreement, and potentially a new closure date for the dump, was not made clear in the Prospective Homebuyers Awareness Package until about a year ago, according to Councilman Steve Herfert.

Throughout the years, he said, residents, including himself, have bought houses in the area under the assumption that the landfill would close in 1995.

Herfert said he is not willing to consider a proposal from either fellow council members or BKK to amend the 1985 agreement.

However, council members Benjamin Wong and Bradley McFadden have said in interviews that they would be willing to at least listen to a BKK proposal to amend the agreement to stay open past 1995. Mayor Richard Jennings and Councilwoman Nancy Manners declined comment on the issue.

McFadden said he cannot approve BKK’s current proposal, which calls for keeping the dump open as long as 2006 and cutting down some western- and northern-facing slopes at the landfill as much as 200 feet. Such cuts would expose part of the operation.

However, he said, he would be willing to listen to a proposal that would include keeping the dump open past 1995 if it called for preserving current ridgelines at the dump and was otherwise acceptable to the public.