Permit Extension Still Considered for Landfill : Lopez Canyon: Neighbors say the city promised to close dump in ’96. Board says it will get bids on alternative plans.

Sanitation officials will continue studying a proposal to extend the life of the Lopez Canyon Landfill near Lake View Terrace, a Los Angeles city panel decided Friday, despite criticism from neighbors that the city is breaking a promise to close the dump in 1996.

At the same meeting, however, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works also promised to get estimates from trash disposal firms on alternatives to keeping the dump open, such as hauling trash by rail to a remote landfill in Utah.

But a request for bids was not sent out Friday--as was expected--due to last-minute changes in the request documents.

Once trash firms return the bids for alternative waste disposal plans, probably in late September, the fate of the controversial dump will be considered by the board, the city’s Planning Commission and, ultimately, the City Council.

But landfill opponents, including Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose northeast Valley district includes the landfill, said the city should study all viable alternatives before taking action to delay the dump’s closure.

Alarcon added that residents of the northeast Valley were promised in a 1991 operating permit for the dump that no further extensions would be sought after 1996--a promise, he said, he expects the board to keep.

“What have the people of the northeast Valley done to you to get stabbed in the back?” a visibly angry Alarcon asked the panel.

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) said through a spokesman that he was equally upset about the proposal to delay the closing date of the dump.

“As I have said in the past, the board and the bureau (of sanitation) must seriously examine alternative landfill proposals before pursuing any permits to keep Lopez Canyon open,” he said in a statement read to the panel.

The latest controversy over the Lopez Canyon Landfill was sparked in March when sanitation officials recommended extending the life of the landfill until 2000, based on a study that says keeping the dump open would save the city $72 million over the cost of hauling trash elsewhere.

But Alarcon questioned the accuracy of the study. The cost of hauling trash by rail to Utah, he argued, was overestimated by about 25%. He noted that a waste disposal company that offered to haul away trash after the Northridge earthquake submitted bids far lower than the estimates in the city’s study.

“You are being blindsided here,” he told the panel. “It is false and you cannot base your decisions on these falsities.”

Steve Fortune, an engineer for the sanitation bureau, said his department will re-examine the cost figures in that study but, he added, “we feel they are accurate.”

Lopez Canyon is the last city-owned dump and takes in 80% of the city’s trash.

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Prior to the board meeting, a small group of landfill opponents held a rally on the steps of City Hall to protest any delay in the closure of the dump. They hung placards around their necks and strung a sign up on City Hall that read: “Dump the Dump.”

“It’s time to close this landfill,” said Roger Klemm, a six-year resident of Lake View Terrace. “They promised us that they would close the landfill in 1996 and what they are doing is going back on their word.”

Ironically, board President Charles Dickerson III announced earlier in the board meeting that Lopez Canyon Landfill had won the “1994 Systems Excellence Award” from the Solid Waste Assn. of America for excellence in landfill operations.