3 Workers Overcome by Gas at Dump

Three workers were briefly overcome by methane gas fumes Friday at the Lopez Canyon dump in Lake View Terrace, but officials said the gas leak was quickly contained and posed no health hazard to workers or neighbors.

The landfill employees, who were not identified, were treated at a nearby clinic after complaining of dizziness, and were later released, said Del Biagi, director of the city’s Bureau of Sanitation.

When they were overcome, two of the workers were digging a trench and installing pipe intended to collect and disperse methane and other potentially harmful gases produced by rotting garbage, Biagi said.

The third employee was apparently working nearby and complained of dizziness about an hour after the others, Biagi said.

At 1 p.m., about four hours after the leak, an Air Quality Management Control District inspector monitored the dump’s gas emissions. An agency spokesman said the gas leak did not pose a health risk to workers or to the neighborhood around the 392-acre landfill.

The agency did not say how much gas had been released.

Workers refilled the trench with dirt after the accident and postponed further excavations until officials from the AQMD, the Bureau of Sanitation and the city Environmental Affairs Department--the agency charged with inspecting and issuing permits to the landfill--meet Tuesday to review safety procedures, said David Luther, an Environmental Affairs Department spokesman.

Despite those cautions, Rob Zapple, president of the Kagel Canyon Civic Assn., a group long opposed to the dump, said the leak and the city’s failure to inform the neighborhood afterward made him nervous.

“This landfill is way more dangerous than they have led us to believe,” said Zapple, who said the dump’s operators had failed to call him about the accident, breaking an arrangement worked out after an earlier gas leak.

“We went through a similar situation in 1989 and were assured as a community that it would never happen again,” he said.

In 1989, a landfill supervisor was hospitalized for 11 days after he was overcome by hydrogen sulfide, a highly poisonous gas, also while installing a gas-collection system.

Lopez Canyon, the only city-operated landfill, takes in about one-quarter of the city’s trash. For several years, it has been the focus of controversy as neighbors have complained about its size, noise and odor.