Residents Demand Review Be in Spanish : Pacoima: Neighbors of Sunshine Canyon Landfill want the environmental report translated. They say the area is 70% Latino.

In the latest development in a decade-old debate, dozens of Latino neighbors of Sunshine Canyon Landfill met in Pacoima on Thursday and demanded that the environmental review on the dump’s expansion be translated into Spanish.

“The northeast San Fernando Valley is 70% Latino, yet we were never notified, nor considered in the decisions about the landfill,” Cynthia Valdez told about 60 people at the Pacoima Boys & Girls Club.

“We’re talking about something that could poison our land and our water. It is time that we demand to understand what is going on.”

Because Los Angeles County is the lead agency in the battle to enlarge the landfill, it is up to county officials to decide whether there are enough Spanish-speakers in the area to warrant a translation of the environmental report, said David Granile, an environmental consultant in private practice.

County officials could not be reached for comment Thursday because of the Veterans Day holiday.

But Arnie Berghoff, an attorney for Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., which owns the landfill, said the company believes that county officials followed the law when they printed the bulky environmental reviews only in English.

“Our assumption is that they’ve abided by what the state law says,” Berghoff said. The expansion request “has been through two votes before the Board of Supervisors and several courts and this (translation request) is something that hasn’t come up before.”

The dump, located in the Santa Susana Mountains above Granada Hills, has been the center of a dispute pitting Los Angeles city officials and neighborhood residents against county officials and Browning-Ferris, the second-largest waste management company in the nation.

Browning-Ferris wants to expand its capacity by 17 million tons, a much smaller increase than the 70 million tons the company originally applied for in 1984.

Because the 215-acre dump straddles the boundary between the city and unincorporated county land, it has drawn both governments into the controversy.

In February, 1991, county supervisors granted the waste company permission to develop a landfill in an area wholly within the county’s jurisdiction.

Subsequently, the city sued, contending that the environmental effects of the dumping plan had not been adequately scrutinized. The city and county have been negotiating a settlement for several months, stalling development of the landfill expansion.

The expansion plan is scheduled to go before the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 18.