ALHAMBRA : Trash Haulers Get Reprieve on Liability Issue : In lieu of requiring garbage collectors to buy insurance policies, officials ask the companies for ideas on how to protect the city from lawsuits.

After hearing complaints from local trash haulers, the City Council on Monday backed down temporarily from requiring commercial garbage collectors to insure the city against liability claims.

Instead, the council, acting as the city’s redevelopment agency, voted 5 to 0 to approve a trash-hauling ordinance that sidestepped the insurance requirement and asked the city’s 15 trash hauling companies to come up with their own plans to help the city stave off potential lawsuits.

Commercial trash haulers have 30 days to work out an alternative.

“This additional time will allow us to come up with a pretty creative plan of action,” said City Manager Julio Fuentes.

“It’s important that the haulers understand that we are still very interested in the indemnity issue,” added Mayor Boyd Condie.

Representatives for city trash haulers claimed a cautious victory following the two-hour hearing at City Hall.

“At least the main item that we didn’t want to see in there was taken out,” Larry Salazar, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Solid Waste Management Assn., said of the ordinance’s indemnity requirement.

Salazar and many of the 20 people who spoke against the proposed ordinance argued that smaller trash haulers would be forced out of business if they had to pay insurance that would indemnify the city against potential lawsuits. They charged that under the proposed ordinance, only larger companies could compete, which would drive up trash hauling rates.

“They’re trying to eliminate competition, is the way I see it,” said John Agamalian, president of A-Trojan Disposal and Recycling Services of Los Angeles.

Alhambra officials said they could not absorb any more financial liability for trash dumping. The city already faces an $8.2-million settlement in a federal lawsuit filed against Alhambra and 25 other cities that used a Monterey Park landfill that has been declared an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup site.

Alhambra must also comply with Assembly Bill 939, enacted in 1989, which requires all cities to reduce landfill waste by 25% by next year and by 50% by the next century, or face fines of $10,000 a day.

The city’s new ordinance requires commercial trash haulers to reduce the waste they dump at landfills by 25%, but trash haulers voiced no complaints about that requirement.