Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : County Planners Tour Sunshine Landfill : Environment: The commission will hold a court-ordered hearing on expansion of the dump.

Los Angeles County regional planning commissioners toured the Sunshine Canyon Landfill Monday morning to prepare for a court-ordered public hearing scheduled Wednesday to re-examine key environmental issues.

Since February, 1991, when the Board of Supervisors approved the first phase of a 70-million-ton expansion at the landfill located above Granada Hills, the site has been a battleground pitting the city and environmentalists against the county and one of the nation’s leading waste-disposal companies.

For four of the five commission members, it was their first trip to the site, which has been idle since September, 1991, when its license to operate expired.

“It was sort of hard to get an impression because the site is not being used,” said Commissioner Patricia Russell of Palmdale, who went on the two-hour tour. “It’s hard for me to form an opinion because I haven’t heard one word of testimony about this issue,” said Russell, who was appointed to the commission in January, 1991.

At the hearing, the commission will receive comment on three specific points designated for additional public debate in an April, 1992, ruling by Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian. It is the first of two or three public hearings expected to be held, Russell said.

Sohigian ruled that Browning-Ferris Industries’ operations records, inadequacies in the original environmental review, and the firm’s decision to exclude trash from the city of Los Angeles should be discussed in a public forum.

Attorneys for the giant waste-disposal concern have defended the company’s records in subsequent court appearances.

There have been seven Regional Planning Commission meetings and three Board of Supervisors’ hearings held between October, 1989, and February, 1991.

Mary Edwards, secretary of the North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens, which opposes the dump, estimates that more than 22,000 pages worth of court documents are on file, “and still counting.”

The organization represents about 700 people from across Los Angeles County and has filed lawsuits and appeals to permanently close the 35-year-old dump, Edwards said.

The Board of Supervisors and Los Angeles city officials have fought over a Browning-Ferris plan to expand the Sunshine Canyon site since county officials approved a permit application that would allow a 17-million-ton expansion as the first phase of the expansion project.

BFI, the nation’s second-largest waste disposal concern, lobbied hard, spending millions of dollars to gain approval of the plan, according to court records. The company’s only other county landfill site in Azusa was closed to conventional trash disposal four years ago because it’s located above a primary water source in the San Gabriel Valley.

When city officials, led by Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents the district where the landfill is located, announced its intentions to fight expansion planned on its side of the landfill, BFI halted city waste disposal at the site.

The 215-acre BFI-owned landfill straddles the boundary line between city and county property about half a mile southwest of the interchange of the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways.

Dean Wise, BFI’s vice president of the Sunshine site, maintains that the location is the most environmentally suitable to landfill expansion of more than 100 sites reviewed by county officials.

“We have invested a lot of money into this project, and we are ready to construct the site if and when we get the proper approvals,” Wise said.

Edwards described the canyon, home to more than 8,600 oak trees and wildlife, as one of the most heavily forested areas in the Santa Susana Mountains, which divide the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

“Without doubt, if they give their approval again, it will be right back in court again,” she said, referring to the commission’s pending decision.

If the county loses the fight to expand the landfill, efforts to approve the Elsmere Canyon are expected to increase, Russell said.

Santa Clarita city officials and local environmentalists already have begun campaigning to squash landfill expansion there.