SUN VALLEY : Resident Group Protests Plan to Reopen Landfill

It could have been a messy protest.

Carrying sacks of garbage, a crowd of about 60 residents of the northeast San Fernando Valley marched to a building owned by landfill operator Browning-Ferris Industries. It was a coals-to-New Castle approach to a protest concerning the proposed B.F.I. Sunshine Canyon landfill project.

“We don’t need no more trash,” Jesus Romero of San Fernando said after he led the mostly Latino crowd in a chant of “Abajo con B.F.I.,” meaning “Down with B.F.I.”

B.F.I is in the midst of a court battle to reopen and expand the landfill, which closed in 1991 when its permit with the city of Los Angeles expired.

The protest was planned by Valley Organized in Community Efforts (VOICE), an activist group of local church and synagogue volunteers.

“Did you see any notices in Spanish (about the landfill) in the local community?” asked Father David Ullrich, pastor of Santa Rosa Catholic Church in San Fernando, using a microphone to address the crowd in front of the B.F.I. building.

“No,” came the answer.

The crowd laid the bags of garbage in front of a door of the building, which they believed was the company’s Western regional office.

But that office was across the street--the garbage had been left at another company building, said B.F.I. spokesman Arnie Berghoff.

“I think they were exercising their constitutional right to free speech,” Berghoff said. “They were very peaceful. We don’t have any problem with what they did.”

Dean Lopez, the organizer of the protest, said the company was called ahead of time and asked to meet with a representative, but no one from B.F.I. came out to speak to them.

Berghoff said he was in Downtown Los Angeles when he heard about the call and did not have time to respond.

A Los Angeles Superior Court Judge is scheduled to decide July 12 on whether to make a temporary injunction against the expansion of the landfill permanent. Berghoff said that if the expansion, first proposed in 1984 and battled out in the courts many times already, goes forward, B.F.I. will be a good neighbor.

“We feel that once the landfill is open, we will be able to work with the community,” Berghoff said.

But the protesters said nothing has been done specifically to inform the Spanish-speaking populations near the landfill about the expansion. “It’s like someone knocking on your door and running away,” Felipe Samano of Sylmar said.

“I think it’s very bad, not only for me, but for everyone,” said Maria Lozano of in San Fernando, who added that she was worried about what effect the dump would have on her eight children.

The demonstration ended with the protesters chanting, in Spanish, “The quiet community will now be heard.”

Then the demonstrators picked up the garbage they had placed at the door of the building and carried it off the property.