Born a Garbage Man : BKK Owner Gets Dumped on From All Sides but Stands His Ground

As a third-grader, Ken Kazarian thought his dad had the neatest job in the world.

When his teacher asked students to describe their parents’ occupations, “I could hardly wait to tell them,” said Kazarian, whose father and grandfather founded the BKK Corp., which operates the West Covina landfill and wants to open a dump next door to Santa Clarita.

“Where else but a landfill can you go with your dad and run around on tractors and play in the dirt all day? It was great.”

But when he proudly told his schoolmates that “my dad owns a dump,” they erupted in laughter.

“That was the first time I realized that what my family did was not the norm,” said Kazarian, who jokingly refers to himself as a “third-generation garbage man.”

Nobody is laughing at him now.

Kazarian, president of Torrance-based BKK, hopes to get a permit to open a dump in Elsmere Canyon next to Santa Clarita, a dump that could be the last new landfill in Los Angeles County.

BKK wants permits from state, regional and local authorities to create a dump that would take in 190 million tons of household waste over the next 50 years, a proposal that is vigorously opposed by Santa Clarita residents and city officials who fear the landfill will contribute to air pollution and traffic and threaten ground water.

Kazarian is no stranger to battles with local officials. The city of West Covina sued his company this summer in an attempt to prohibit the 30-year-old BKK landfill, which took hazardous waste for 16 years and continues to take in 9,000 tons of household garbage a day, from staying open beyond November, 1995.

BKK officials have said that they would be more willing to discuss an earlier closure date for the West Covina landfill once the Elsmere Canyon landfill is making money. However, they say that is unlikely to occur until after the date West Covina wants the landfill to close.

His opponents in Santa Clarita characterize Kazarian, 44, who dropped out of Pepperdine University as a junior and never returned for his degree, as personable and shrewd. They describe the Rolling Hills Estates resident as good at his own public relations, a man who generally remains businesslike and always returns telephone calls promptly.

“He sort of reminds me of the snake in the Garden of Eden,” said City Councilwoman Jill Klajic, “very beguiling and very charming.”

Klajic and others in Santa Clarita see Kazarian’s pleasant personality and his company’s charitable contributions to local organizations as disingenuous attempts to win support for the proposed 190-million-ton dump.

Somewhat kinder was Nancy Adin, a neighbor and longtime critic of the West Covina landfill: “He’s just in a lousy business and nobody loves him, that’s all.”

Lousy or not, it is a business that Kazarian was born to run.

Although BKK was formally incorporated in 1953, the roots of the business go back to 1910, when Kazarian’s great-grandfather, Kazar Kazarian, immigrated to the United States with his family from Armenia. The patriarch died shortly after the move, and the family, which had been fairly wealthy in Armenia, wound up nearly broke, swindled by a relative who had been entrusted with the family’s money, Kazarian said.

Ben K. Kazarian, his grandfather, worked to support the family, hauling manure and cleaning yards, “everything nobody else wanted to do,” Kazarian said.

Ben K. Kazarian got his first contract to haul garbage in 1922, Kazarian said, and in the 1930s and early 1940s took over leases on burning dumps in East Los Angeles and Venice, which the family operated until the 1950s, when burning trash was outlawed.

In 1972, Ben K. Kazarian retired, leaving the company to his son, Benjamin Jr., now chairman of the board. Ken Kazarian became president of the company in 1984.

The oldest of four brothers and the first grandchild, Ken Kazarian began training early to take over the family business, going to work with his father and grandfather when he was 7, back when the office was a castoff wooden shipping crate, with orange crates for shelves.

“I’m third generation in the business--our name is on the front door,” he said. “All my assets are tied up in this business. We take it personally, both philosophically and emotionally, when people attack us.”

But what Kazarian really wants to do is race cars. He talks avidly about his days on Mickey Thompson’s Off-Road Championship circuit, driving a banana-yellow Scirocco. Racing memorabilia adorn his office, including assorted trophies and a piece of a race car engine used as a doorstop.

“Driving race cars was such a strong emotional outlet,” Kazarian said. “You can’t think of anything else but what you are doing.”

Because Kazarian’s family got its start in the United States doing the jobs that no one else would do, he said he appreciates and sympathizes with the plight of today’s immigrants.

“My grandfather told me about how hard it is,” Kazarian said. Hauling garbage “was something that no one else wanted to do, and I wanted to do it.”

On a bookshelf in his office, just above a clock radio that always reads “12:00,” lies the book “Managing the Media.” It includes a whole chapter that praises Kazarian and his company for “making the best of an impossible situation” in dealing with reporters.

In fact, dealing with the community and the news media has become a third of his job, he says.

“I like getting to tell our side of the story,” even if it’s a negative story about the company, he said. “If I’m on television and I take 30 seconds out of a 90-second story, that’s 30 seconds less for the other guy to hammer on me.”

And hammer him they do.

In 1984, 21 families were evacuated from their homes near the West Covina dump because high levels of methane gas were detected in their neighborhood. It was not until six months later that the families returned.

In 1987, BKK paid a $43-million settlement to more than 500 neighbors of the dump for alleged health and safety problems related to the dump. Kazarian still seems bitter over the lawsuit.

“According to them,” he said, “we’ve done everything from making the hair of their dog fall out to changing the color of their bananas sitting in the cupboard.”

BKK took over the lease on the dump in 1963 and obtained a license to accept hazardous waste in 1968. Before tighter federal regulations made the business less appealing in 1984, the dump took in more than 3 million tons of toxic substances, including vinyl chloride, benzene, cyanide and a variety of acids. It currently brings in more than $40 million in revenue a year, the bulk of BKK’s earnings, Kazarian said.

The city of West Covina sued in June in an effort to close the dump by the end of 1995, holding BKK to a memorandum of understanding signed in 1985. BKK, which has a city land-use permit to keep the landfill open until 2006, has argued that the document was non-binding and that even if it were, the city has not lived up to its side of the deal.

Kazarian maintains that he only agreed to early closure of the 583-acre dump if a commercial or office complex could be built on BKK land adjoining the landfill. The project would help BKK make up the revenue it would lose by closing the dump. He says the city delayed approving the plans, and now there is no market for the development.

The city contends that the plans were inadequate and BKK is using the issue to avoid closing the dump on time.

Attorneys for the two sides are scheduled to square off in Pomona Superior Court on Oct. 29, when BKK will ask a judge to prevent the city from enforcing the 1995 closure date.

Kazarian faces battles on two fronts. As legal bills mount in West Covina, he is pouring money into Elsmere Canyon.

Over the past seven years, BKK has spent about $17 million planning the Elsmere Canyon project, Kazarian said, and is likely to spend millions more before so much as a banana peel is disposed of there.

When it was initially proposed in 1986, and as late as 1991, BKK had expected to open the dump this year. An environmental impact report, which has been postponed several times, is due out later this year.

“It’s a tiring campaign” for the Elsmere project, Kazarian said. “It’s dragging out much longer than normal. I thought we would have had an EIR circulating three years ago.”

Although he is known for his calm and businesslike demeanor, Kazarian struggles to control his anger with Santa Clarita, which has launched an energetic campaign against the proposed dump in its back yard.

“The city of Santa Clarita has tried to run outside the point continually. The city there is really good at talking out of both sides of their mouth,” he said, his grip tightening on the steering wheel of his white Lincoln as he followed the 605 Freeway to his Torrance office.

The city has an identical complaint about him.

“He’s very good at public relations and kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth,” said Councilwoman Klajic, whose city has this year budgeted $300,000 to fight the dump proposal.

The battle won’t end soon, all participants agree. And even if all the many permits needed to open a dump in Elsmere Canyon are granted, it probably still won’t be over.

“I think it’s safe to assume that there will be a lawsuit somewhere,” Kazarian said. “No matter what happens.”

As the plaque on the desk of the third-generation garbage man promises, in Latin: “No one wounds me without getting paid back.”