Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : 200 Voice Opposition to Elsmere Canyon Dump : Environment: Meeting is mixture of old fears about landfill and new concerns prompted by Jan. 17 quake.

A man in a bear suit, community activists, environmentalists, elected officials and actress Linda Gray delivered a message to county and federal officials: They don’t want a dump in nearby Elsmere Canyon.

More than 200 Santa Clarita residents packed the Ranch House Inn conference room Thursday to voice their opposition to the proposed dump. The canyon is outside the Santa Clarita city limits, southeast of where San Fernando Road intersects the Antelope Valley Freeway.

“The thought of destroying so precious and unique a resource for a repository for human trash is unthinkable,” said Alan Kishbaugh, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns.

“If we allow so poor a use of the land as this, we may well deserve the disastrous environmental consequences to our health and well-being that an action will surely bring.”

The three-hour meeting was sponsored by the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department and included a representative of the U. S. Forest Service. It wasn’t part of the official public hearing process for the environmental impact report being prepared on the dump proposal, but county regional planner Richard Frazier said new information from the meeting will be included in the document.

As such, the meeting was a mixture of old fears about the landfill and new concerns prompted by the Northridge earthquake and its rattling of the Santa Clarita Valley.

“You can retrofit buildings, you can retrofit freeways, but you can’t retrofit a landfill,” Santa Clarita Councilwoman Jan Heidt warned.

“Only You Can Prevent Forest Dumps,” read the sign carried by the bear, who never spoke but pumped his arms and waved enthusiastically in support of other speakers.

Many residents restated concerns that a dump could leak into Santa Clarita’s underground water supply, which the area relied upon heavily during California’s drought and in the months since the Jan. 17 earthquake.

Gray, a 20-year Santa Clarita Valley resident, said a dump threatens the quality of life that prompted her and others to move to the community.

“I never used to worry about the water (my children) drink, water they swim in,” Gray said. “Now I have a grandchild and it is a completely different story.”

The draft environmental impact report on Elsmere Canyon has been delayed several times and is now projected for release at the end of the year.