It’s Time to Finally Shut Down the Lopez Canyon Dump : The city should make good on its promise to Valley residents and close the landfill. It is a threat to our health, environment, air quality, water and wildlife. What’s more, it’s an eyesore.

In the 1980s the city of Los Angeles promised to close the Lopez Canyon Landfill by 1991. In 1990 the city received a five-year extension and promised to close the landfill by February, 1996. Now, the city of Los Angeles wants to break that promise and keep Lopez Canyon open another five years. It’s time city officials stopped breaking promises to San Fernando Valley residents and closed Lopez Canyon on time.

Contrary to what city officials claim, the landfill is not a necessity any more. Yet 85% of Los Angeles’ trash still gets dumped there--and we in the Valley always complain the city doesn’t share with us! Part of the rest gets dumped at various landfills throughout the Valley.

It’s time for city officials to realize that people in the San Fernando Valley are tired of being treated like trash by the city. When residents of West L.A. recently opposed a recycling transfer station in their neighborhood, the city immediately responded and stopped the station from being built. Valley residents have been fighting for the closure of Lopez Canyon for years. When is the city going to respond to our needs?

Lopez Canyon is a threat to our health, environment, air quality, water and wildlife. In the past few months, the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation has been cited repeatedly for serious health and safety violations at Lopez Canyon. These were not minor violations. All of them endangered the health of workers at the site and nearby residents. One notice of violation was issued for failing to repair gas emission equipment. For 10 days, landfill gases were emitted into the air. For 10 days, innocent children, residents and workers breathed these dangerous fumes.

If you think you can escape the problems at Lopez by staying indoors, think again. On Nov. 16, 1994, the Bureau of Sanitation was reprimanded by the Regional Water Quality Control Board for dumping contaminated water into Bartholomaus Canyon. In October, 1994, the bureau illegally discharged 500 gallons of liquid from one of its disposal areas into that same canyon. The water was draining from a seep in the landfill. Yet all of the environmental documents justifying the dump’s expansion deny there is any ground water in the area.

In the past two decades, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed by residents living near landfills around the country. Many of these people have contracted cancer, respiratory problems, cardiopulmonary disorders and other diseases from polluted air and ground water directly associated with nearby landfills.

We in the San Fernando Valley are not immune to these health risks. Ambient air monitored at the perimeter of the landfill registers air toxicity 200 times the accepted health risk standard. Eventually, our lives and our children’s lives could be endangered because the Bureau of Sanitation insists on keeping this hazardous dump open.

The city of Los Angeles already owes more than $60,000 in fines for violations--and that’s just for one month! It would make much more sense to spend a few extra dollars to ensure the safety of our neighborhoods by closing the dump rather than accruing fines.

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In addition to the violations and health risks, there is another reason local residents are adamant about getting this dump closed--it’s an eyesore! The dump is not situated underground or out in a field, but towers 1,800 feet into the air--100 feet above the skyline. When the Santa Ana winds blow, so does the garbage.

In the past five years, we have made great strides in creating recycling facilities and changing the way trash is handled. Last year, prices for materials such as newsprint, corrugated cardboard and white office paper skyrocketed, providing a boon to recyclers. Reportedly, this was due to the building and opening of the many manufacturing facilities which created the market for these items.

A recent study by a nonprofit organization, Californians Against Waste Foundation, estimates there are 3,000 recycling facilities in California. And since 1991, jobs in recycling have increased by more than 40% from 14,000 to 20,000 in 1994. By the year 2000, the number is expected to be more than 60,000.

In addition to the recycling industry, new technologies are rapidly emerging that address different individual components of the waste stream as well as the mixed material left after the readily recyclable items have been removed. These technologies, known as remanufacturing or reprocessing, create entirely new, marketable items such as construction-related products from material that otherwise would be dumped.

These and other promising developments in waste reduction, recycling and remanufacturing should be the focus of the Bureau of Sanitation’s efforts, not battling the community to keep an outdated and dangerous dump open.