Trashing Common Sense : If reopened and expanded, Sunshine Canyon Landfill would contaminate drinking water. Besides, the county has a capacity surplus of 23,000 tons of garbage per day.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to make a decision this week on the proposed expansion and reopening of Sunshine Canyon Landfill, located 1 1/2 miles from Sylmar, Granada Hills and Porter Ranch.

Here, Browning-Ferris Industries plans to gut 542 acres of a designated significant ecological area, destroying 20,000 mature trees to build a giant landfill.

A mile downwind and downstream lies the uncovered Los Angeles Reservoir. It holds city drinking water that the landfill would pollute through the ground, the air and animal-borne garbage.

Browning-Ferris, the dump’s operator, has one of the worst landfill-violation records in the United States. Its infractions range from over-dumping and improper disposal to antitrust violations. But even if Browning-Ferris should operate Sunshine Canyon responsibly, it would not be able to prevent the contamination of the water.

With all these factors against Sunshine Canyon, why are the supervisors even considering the site? According to the Department of Public Works, the lead agency in advising the county on all waste-management issues, Los Angeles needs this landfill to avert a trash crisis. The fact that the crisis is not only unproven but in effect denied by official data has not cooled the alarmist rhetoric predicting it.

Four years ago, an official of the county Department of Public Works testified before the county Regional Planning Commission that “the expansion of Sunshine Canyon may make the difference between trash on the street in 1992 and no trash on the street in 1992.” Doomsday was later pushed forward to Nov. 1 of this year, which also has past. The latter prediction was based on the assumption that the Puente Hills Landfill would close this fall.

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If the cries of wolf deserved credibility, by now we should at least be on the verge of having trash on the streets. Are we? Hardly.

Puente Hills is still in operation, accepting 11,970 tons of trash a day, and its operators say it can keep operating another 20 years without filling up. At the moment, L.A. County has a landfill capacity surplus of 23,000 tons per day, according to an August, 1993, staff document from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, a state body. The county’s 20 active landfills receive 40,026 tons per working day compared with 63,826 permitted.

“There is no crisis,” says Al Hecht, chairman of the Solid Waste Citizens Advisory Group, a citywide panel established by the Bureau of Sanitation. Lynn Plambeck of LASER, a Santa Clarita landfill alternatives group, and Mary Edwards of the North Valley Coalition, a homeowners group, agree. All three claim the Department of Public Works’ information is wrong.

Looseness with information is typical of the department. A Los Angeles County Grand Jury report in 1988 was full of criticism of the Department of Public Works’ elusive methodology, unexplained assumptions and baffling numerical conclusions.

Discussing Sunshine Canyon, Assemblywoman Paula Boland wrote the supervisors: “The expansion is unnecessary because Los Angeles County has a surplus landfill capacity.” There is enough capacity, according to Robert Stone of the Waste Management Board, to meet a state legal requirement that every county have 15 years’ disposal capacity.

On Oct. 21, I presented the county supervisors with two sets of figures. One showed the current county landfill capacity, enough for 15 years. The second showed the available landfill capacity should Puente Hills, Chiquita, Palmdale and BKK landfills get the expansions or permit extensions they are currently seeking--enough for 23 years. The supervisors granted a four-week continuance to allow the Department of Public Works to study the issue.

I question the validity of assigning this task to the Department of Public Works. What is the likelihood of the only agency to say we are in a trash crisis admitting it made a mistake?

Los Angeles does not need any new landfills. There are other options for our trash, and I’m not referring just to recycling. Hauling by rail to remote landfill sites, bioconversion and transformation of waste exist today but are being ignored because of expense.

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Opening Sunshine Canyon will be more costly. The lawsuits that will arise from drinking poisoned water will cost the county millions more than the county expects to collect in dumping fees.

It is time the supervisors recognized that landfills in an urban area are no longer an acceptable industry. By the 21st Century, the county can have all the alternate technologies in full operation.

Before coming to any decisions regarding Sunshine Canyon or any further landfills, our supervisors owe it to their electorate to uncover the truth about the “trash crisis.” Once they discover the myth, they can concentrate their energies on finding alternatives.