Trash Hauled to Recyclers Sends Pollution to Valley Air : Environment: Concern is raised over added smog as recyclables continue to be trucked in weekly from the Westside.

Just when residents of West Los Angeles had reason to feel virtuous about recycling, a San Fernando Valley councilwoman comes up with this complaint:

Saving Westside landfill space is having a lousy effect on the air.

That’s because 20 truckloads a week of the Westside’s old cottage cheese containers, wine bottles and newspapers are being hauled all the way to the Valley and Downtown to be sorted, a rate that may eventually reach 150 truckloads a week with the upcoming expansion of the recycling program.

All those truck trips generate a lot of exhaust emissions.

“While we’re doing wonderful things to reduce the waste stream, I’m concerned we’re messing up the air,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, whose Valley district includes a recycling center in Reseda near the intersection of Oxnard Street and Reseda Boulevard, where about a third of the stuff is hauled.

Despite five years of effort, the city government has failed to find a site for a recycling center in pricey West Los Angeles.

“Most of the people on the Westside want it to remain either residential or commercial,” said Gyl Elliott, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. “Land is very valuable there, and almost none of it is zoned for manufacturing,” the classification a recycling center needs.

City officials said Wednesday that they hope to close a deal next month for a site in an industrial area of Palms near the corner of Robertson and Venice boulevards. Under the deal, a private contractor, Best Way Recycling, which runs the Reseda and Downtown centers, would develop the site by early next year and buy the city’s recyclables for about $14 a ton to resell at a profit.

But Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose district includes the Westside, said several other proposals have failed because of opposition from business owners and residents.

“Is the (Palms) site in my district? No? Hallelujah,” Galanter said. “I feel like I’ve dealt with this one too many times.”

Sanitation officials will report back next month on the progress of the deal to the city’s Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee.

About 25,000 homes on the Westside now participate in the recycling program. Beginning Sept. 6, about 4,000 homes will be added to the program each week, officials said.

Los Angeles’ 5-year-old recycling plan calls for each of the city’s five sanitation districts to contain at least one Materials Recovery Facility, or MRF, where recyclables are sorted, and a transfer station, where garbage and yard trimmings are collected before being hauled in larger trucks to a landfill.

The city has achieved its goals in all but the Westside district, where the lack of both facilities has forced trucks to crisscross the smoggy Los Angeles Basin, at a cost to the city of at least $1 million in extra garbage collection expenses, said Drew Sones, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation.

Chick and Galanter, who sit on the waste management committee, urged the Los Angeles International Airport to allow the city to buy or use a 4.5-acre parking lot there for a transfer station. The city owns the airport, which is managed by an independent commission. Galanter said if they played host to the transfer station, the airport or airlines may be able to get tax credits or other benefits for helping to reduce air pollution.

But airport officials have given many reasons for refusing to negotiate with the city to date, ranging from the aircraft-endangering birds that might be attracted by such a facility to a Federal Aviation Administration rule against using land for non-aviation purposes at airports that receive federal funds.