Neighbors Take Action Against Recycling Firms : Environment: Walnut, Hacienda Heights and Diamond Bar residents say the nearby sorting sites would be too smelly and busy for their communities.

It’s not that the folks in Walnut, Diamond Bar and Hacienda Heights oppose recycling. They just don’t want it to go “big time” so close to their own back yards.

So some residents are hiring lawyers and filing petitions to fight proposals for two large recycling facilities--where trash would be dumped temporarily to sort out recyclables--planned in the City of Industry and at the Puente Hills Landfill.

Such plants are viewed by many trash experts as an important part of the long-range solution to Los Angeles County’s problem of dwindling landfill space. Under the plan, trash that cannot be recycled would be shipped by train to landfills proposed for remote desert locations, and recyclables would be trucked off to markets.

But in Diamond Bar and Walnut, where houses are about half a mile from the 40-acre parcel where City of Industry officials want to build their mega-recycling facility, residents are acting as if a dump were going in next door.

They can already see the nighttime glare that would be created by a lighted, around-the-clock operation where trash would be dumped and sorted daily. They can smell the stench of industrial waste mixed with baby diapers and coffee grounds.

They can hear the daily clanking of a mile-long string of desert-bound rail cars loaded with trash, albeit in closed containers. And they can see the hundreds of smoke-belching garbage trucks roaring along their thoroughfares, worsening traffic problems.

“Conceptually, we’re not opposed to the idea of a (material recovery facility), but this is a completely inappropriate location, within 1,000 feet from our border,” said Walnut Mayor William T. Choctaw. He added that his city will take any steps necessary to try to stop the proposed City of Industry facility.

Diamond Bar Mayor Gary G. Miller agreed, adding that, “if the cities of Diamond Bar and Walnut weren’t so close, this (City of Industry site) would be an ideal location. But we’ve got homes, baseball fields, and a hospital right next door.”

City of Industry officials, who have consistently declined comment on the proposed facility, reportedly do not plan for the center to be operational until 1998. But already, residents have sent hundreds of letters in opposition, suggesting Industry officials find another site in their city, which spans more than 10 miles.

Proponents of the trash-sorting centers, called a “material recovery facility (MRF),” or “murf,” say the opposition is overstating the case.

They say the facilities would be enclosed and resemble a large warehouse rather than a traditional landfill, resulting in no odors to bother neighbors. The main drawback, they say, would be the traffic from trash trucks using the facility, possibly further congesting already overloaded streets.

“We can knock out all the noise and odor problems at the murfs. The critical question is whether adequate road structure is available to get the trucks in and out. . . ,” said Thomas Harvey, La Verne’s mayor pro tem and chairman of two waste-by-rail committees--one affiliated with the San Gabriel Valley Assn. of Cities and the other with the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County.

The Industry facility would draw about 800 trucks a day, while about 500 would haul trash in and out of the center planned for Puente Hills.

Finding a home for a “murf” is about as difficult as finding any community willing to embrace a new dump.

“We’ve found that the murfs are just as difficult to locate as landfills,” said Theresa Dodge, an engineer with the county Sanitation Districts, which is fighting two lawsuits that may thwart progress on its planned $50-million facility planned for Puente Hills.

Trash experts say the centers offer the valley’s 29 cities their best shot at coming close to state-mandated recycling levels during the next seven years. All cities must divert 25% of their waste stream away from landfills by 1995 and a highly ambitious 50% by the year 2000. On average, cities statewide are currently diverting 15% to 20%.

In addition, officials say the Industry and Puente Hills facilities could together increase the valley’s current capacity for garbage disposal by as much as 40%. It is unclear, however, whether there would be adequate economic incentive for waste haulers from outside the Valley to dump at those facilities.

City of Industry officials have had no comment on the issue since their proposal was first made public more than a year ago. They are now preparing a second environmental impact report for the project, having scrapped the first one in the wake of stiff opposition from Walnut and Diamond Bar.

Meanwhile, the future of the proposed Puente Hills facility, which has had a 30-year operating permit approved by county supervisors, is now in the hands of a Superior Court judge, who is pondering several legal challenges to the EIRs upon which the supervisors based the decision.

The judge may decide that the environmental studies commissioned by the landfill’s operator, the County Sanitation Districts, must be redone.

Complicating the situation, developer RR&C; Corp. does not want to sell land next to the Puente Hills landfill that the Sanitation Districts needs for the new facility. An attorney for the developer said the land is needed to expand an existing commercial center.

And, like those in Diamond Bar and Walnut, nearby residents and school officials do not want the extra tons of trash and hundreds of garbage trucks that the plant would draw. The Puente Hills Landfill already accepts 12,000 tons of waste daily, and officials want to take 4,000 more tons at the recycling facility.

The Puente Hills proposal is seen by trash experts as the valley’s bellwether “murf”--what may be the first, and certainly the largest, to come on-line in the county because it would be a public-sector operation concerned more with the public good than turning a profit, district officials say. They hope to open the facility within a couple of years.

City of Industry officials would, presumably, be operating their material recovery facility at a profit to the city. West Covina and Pomona, as well as Browning Ferris Industries in Azusa, are also toying with the idea of building rail-side recycling facilities in hopes of earning handsome profits.

In the City of Commerce, city council members placed many restrictions on a planned rail-side material recovery facility when approving its environmental impact report recently. But they were also anxious to approve a development that could bring their city an $2 million a year in tax revenue.

Trash industry giant Waste Management has teamed up with Santa Fe Railroad to operate the planned Commerce facility.

It is unclear how much City of Industry officials hope to earn by operating their proposed trash-sorting center.

The facility would be situated northeast of Grand Avenue and southeast of Valley Boulevard between the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific railroad tracks.

Dick H. Register, assistant director of the Industry Manufacturers Council, defended the project, saying that although residents’ health concerns are understandable, they are exaggerated.

“We have more than 2,000 businesses in this city and we’ll need something like this to comply with state recycling laws,” he said.

How much demand there will be, and when, for material recovery facilities in the valley or elsewhere in the county seems to be anyone’s guess, trash experts say. But their best prediction is that the markets for recyclables will be ripe and landfill space will be direly low by the end of the decade.

“There’s a lot of trash and there’s a lot of money in the business, and where there’s money private enterprise will find ways to make it happen,” said Harvey.