Residents Decry Plan for Septic Dump Site : Environment: North Valley homeowners offer city officials a petition of protest. They fear stench, health hazards, decline in property values.

Homeowners in the northern San Fernando Valley on Monday night voiced opposition to a city proposal to consider a Chatsworth site as a collection point for septic-tank waste.

“What we’re concerned about is the stench . . . health hazards from spills and collisions, and the associated decline in property values,” said Winnetka resident Ove Larsen, who presented public works officials with a petition signed by more than 100 people who object to the site.

Nineteen people attended the meeting at the Northridge Recreation Center to get information about the proposed site at the west side of Winnetka Avenue between Nordhoff Street and the railroad tracks.

Linda Reponen, an environmental manager for the Public Works Department, stressed that the purpose of the meeting was to present information about the proposed site, and that public comment would be taken at public hearings after a draft environmental study is released, probably in February or March.

Most of the people who attended the meeting asked questions, but some protested the location, about a quarter-mile from a residential area.

Chatsworth resident John Chady, who lives south of the site, said he can already smell odors from a nearby manufacturing company and a shampoo-bottling company.

“What I’m really concerned about is the prevailing wind,” Chady said. “What provisions would be made to seal the delivery systems from the wind?”

Don Bunts, a city consultant with HDR Engineering, answered that the potential for odors escaping would be “very low” because trucks using the facility would discharge waste through hoses, which would fit into specially constructed channels leading to a sewer line along Winnetka Avenue.

It was the first of two community meetings to be held in locales named as possible sites where septic tank waste would be collected for processing at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the Sepulveda Basin.

A meeting to hear public comments on a site at 9701 San Fernando Road in Sun Valley will be held at 7 tonight in the Lake View Terrace Recreation Center, 11075 Foothill Blvd.

A third meeting, to discuss a Downtown Los Angeles site at the northeast corner of Jesse Street and Santa Fe Avenue, which was scheduled for Monday, has been canceled at the request of City Councilman Richard Alatorre, Reponen said.

The waste-collection facility was nearly completed at Tillman last October, when the Board of Public Works--under pressure from nearby homeowners, environmentalists and City Council member Laura Chick--ordered city employees to complete an environmental study of the project.

Homeowners argued that having 90 to 200 loads of septic-tank waste trucked into the facility--as was originally projected--would contaminate the surrounding Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area.

The Tillman facility would have been the central dumping spot for septic-tank waste from the Valley and nearby cities, including Malibu and Calabasas. It was planned to pipe the waste from there to the Hyperion Treatment Plant in Playa del Rey.

As part of the environmental study, the Public Works Department is required to consider alternative sites to the Tillman facility as the central dumping spot for septic-tank waste. Beginning in March, public works officials began developing an initial list of 70 potential alternatives, which was narrowed down to 19 and finally to three.

The study could recommend Tillman, another site or more than one site.

Possible Sites for a Septic Waste Collection Facility The city has announced three alternative sites for a septic waste collection facility located, but not opened, at the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. A community meeting will be held in Lake View Terrace tonight. Potential sites: