Elsmere Dump Report Presents 9 Other Options : Landfill: Alternatives include relocating project, shipping trash to Imperial County.

Deep within a massive report issued last week on the likely environmental fallout from building a dump in Elsmere Canyon is a list of alternatives to the proposed landfill, which would swallow 16,500 tons of garbage delivered daily by a fleet of 1,100 trucks.

The nine alternatives include locating the dump at different sites, leaving oak-studded Elsmere undeveloped, or shipping the garbage via railroad as far away as Imperial County, on the Mexican border.

But the alternatives may prove as controversial as the long-planned Elsmere project. Most of the other sites face serious political, legal or financial hurdles, and anti-Elsmere dump activists criticized the 19-pound environmental impact report for presenting options that are not realistic.

“I’m totally surprised at this document being so unprofessional. They’ve been working on it for so long,” said Marsha McLean, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Canyons Preservation Committee, which opposes a dump in Elsmere Canyon.

“They’ve listed everything but they’ve addressed them in a cursory manner. They’ve just skimmed the top.”

Ken Kazarian, president of BKK Corp., which is trying to build the dump and paid for the environmental impact report, defended the study, saying it is thorough and presents legitimate options. He said BKK’s environmental consultants considered a total of 145 options before paring them down to the final nine.

“The alternatives issue in general is a very difficult one to debate,” Kazarian said. “In theory, one could come up with an endless list of alternatives.”

Since BKK proposed the Elsmere dump project in 1987, it has drawn sharp opposition from Santa Clarita city officials, community activists, environmentalists and business leaders. They argue that the landfill--designed to hold 190 million tons of waste and stay open for up to 50 years--will pollute the air, threaten underground water supplies and lower property values in the upscale bedroom community.

In its list of alternatives, the EIR said the proposed dump could still be located at Elsmere, but be enlarged or reduced in size.

Under one plan, the dump would absorb 16,500 tons of trash per day, the same rate as the current proposal, but operate only for 20 years. The other plan calls for accepting 10,000 tons daily, with a 32-year life span. This option is backed by the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Department.

These two cutback plans would reduce the dump’s capacity almost by half, to 100 million tons.

The EIR said the dump could be enlarged by expanding it into adjacent Sombrero Canyon, giving it a capacity of 340 million tons. This larger site could accept trash for 70 years, the report said.

Like the current configuration, these three Elsmere options require a swap of private land owned by BKK for property within the Angeles National Forest.

But the U. S. Forest Service opposes the exchange, and Elsmere critics say they are against a landfill no matter what its size.

“My gut tells me (a smaller landfill) is going to have the same impact, just a shorter lifetime,” said Jeff Kolin, Santa Clarita’s deputy city manager.

Another option cited in the environmental report is building the dump in Towsley Canyon instead of Elsmere. Towsley is southwest of Santa Clarita, near the Golden State Freeway. With more than 2,300 truck deliveries per day, that site could hold 100 million tons and would last about 20 years, the EIR said.

But because of strategic land purchases made at Towsley by a state parks agency, that canyon is an unlikely locale for a dump.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in recent years purchased about 500 acres in and near Towsley Canyon, effectively blocking truck access to it from the freeway. The land buys were a deliberate move to thwart efforts by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts to locate a dump in Towsley.

“As a practical matter, I have to say it’s virtually impossible” to bring garbage trucks into the canyon, said Joseph T. Edmiston, the conservancy’s executive director.

The EIR also listed an alternative dump site in three canyons--Mission, Rustic and Sullivan--that lie west of the San Diego Freeway and south of Mulholland Drive in the city of Los Angeles. The canyons could hold 126 million tons of garbage, the document said, and would last about 20 years.

However, those canyons are in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and recent federal park regulations prohibit public dumps in national recreation zones.

“Unless federal law can be changed, there’s no chance (of building a landfill) at Mission, Rustic and Sullivan,” said Don Nellor, chief of solid waste planning for the county sanitation districts.

The EIR also said garbage could be placed on railroad cars and shipped out of Los Angeles to remote dump sites in Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties. But at least two of these sites face serious local opposition.

In Riverside County, the EIR said, waste could be sent to a former open-pit iron mine located near Eagle Mountain, east of Joshua Tree National Monument. The vast pit could hold 700 million tons of waste and has an expected lifetime of 115 years, according to the report.

But locating a dump at Eagle Mountain has been previously attempted. It generated substantial local opposition.

Although the Eagle Mountain project was ratified on a 3-2 vote by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors in 1992, a San Diego judge last year overturned the approval, saying an environmental report on the project was inadequate. MRC, the company trying to build the dump, is expected to seek another permit from the supervisors.

“It’s very controversial, and I anticipate that it will continue to be so,” said Robyn Nagel, an aide to Riverside Supervisor Roy Wilson, whose district includes the Eagle Mountain area.

The Elsmere EIR cited southeastern San Bernardino County as another possible alternative. Waste Management Inc. wants to build a dump in the desert there near Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base. That proposed site, known as Bolo Station, could hold 430 million tons of waste.

Ray Andersen, director of government affairs for Waste Management, said his firm expects to win approval from the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors next month and could open the dump as early as 1996.

But he acknowledged that the proposal is likely to face court challenges by local environmentalists and others that could substantially delay it.

State Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear Lake), who represents the area, said he opposes a dump there. Local farmers, he said, fear that flies carried on garbage from Los Angeles could infest local crops.

“Having solid waste that’s coming out of a Medfly zone . . . could invite an ag. disaster,” he said.

Apparently the least controversial alternative listed is shipping trash to the Mesquite Mine, an open-pit gold mine in the southeastern Imperial County.

Located 30 miles from the nearest town, the mine could accommodate 600 million tons of waste and remain open for a century. A proposal to open a landfill there is set to come before that county’s Board of Supervisors in March.

The project has the support of the local supervisor, Sam Sharp. He said a major incentive for Imperial County is the fees it could charge other government jurisdictions to dump at the mine.

The county wants to clean up 10 small dumps in the area that don’t have protective liners. Sharp and other supporters see dumping fees from Mesquite as a mechanism to pay for the cleanup, expected to cost up to $60 million.

Sharp said local environmentalists are worried that rain runoff from a dump at the mine could taint underground water tables and contribute to desert soil erosion. But supporters believe the mine’s remoteness would minimize any such problems, he said.

The mine’s distance from Los Angeles could add to the cost of shipping waste there, as rail transportation requires additional labor and equipment to transfer waste between trucks and railroad cars.

The environmental impact report is subject to written public comment through April 28. The L. A. county supervisors will then review the document and open a series of public hearings before voting on the project.

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Alternative Landfill Sites

Two landfill sites in Los Angeles are being considered as alternatives to the proposed Elsmere Canyon site near Santa Clarita. The Towsley Canyon spot is estimated to have a 100-million ton capacity for trash over a 20-year period. The Mission-Rustic-Sullivan canyons site is estimated to have a 126-million ton capacity for trash over a 20-year-period.

Landfill sites

1) Elsmere Canyon

2) Towsley Canyon

3) Mission-Rustic-Sullivan canyons

Source: Elsmere Canyon Landfill Project Environment Impact Report