Puente Hills : Landfill to Stay Open While Expansion Plan is Reworked

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that the Puente Hills Landfill can stay open while the facility’s operators amend an environmental study of plans to keep it open for 10 more years and expand into nearby canyons.

Judge Diane Wayne said the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, which operates the site, could continue to dump refuse into the existing landfill but must stop working in the proposed expansion area near Hacienda Heights neighborhoods.

In July, the County Board of Supervisors approved operating permits for expansion and extension of the landfill’s life based on the environmental study. The dump had been scheduled to close Nov. 1.

Wayne wrote that the landfill is a vital part of the county trash system and that alternative dumping sites are not “economically feasible.” She rejected arguments from attorneys for the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, Hacienda Home Improvement Assn. and R R & C Corp., owners of a City of Industry technology park, that the existing dump was polluting underground water supplies and that other landfills could take Puente Hills’ trash.

Last month, Wayne ruled that the environmental impact report did not sufficiently examine the expansion effect on ground water, and failed to spell out alternate plans to transport trash from the site by rail to remote locations.