City Begins Campaign to Attract a Crowd of Landfill Protesters : Waste: Santa Clarita officials hope to pack a May 31 hearing with opponents of proposed Elsmere Canyon dump that county says would be the world’s largest.

Gearing up for a crucial public hearing next week on plans for a 190-million-ton trash dump in Elsmere Canyon, Santa Clarita officials have launched a $20,000 advertising campaign aimed at drawing hundreds of residents, preferably angry residents, to the May 31 hearing.

City Hall’s television, radio and print ads are but a part of Santa Clarita’s efforts to quash the new landfill, which Los Angeles County planners say would be the world’s largest.

The city recently assigned a top administrator to lobby full time against the landfill. A residents group called Save the Angeles Foundation has made thousands of refrigerator magnets urging people to attend the May 31 meeting. And even the Disney Corp., which owns a studio ranch next to the proposed landfill, is joining in.

City officials and activists say there’s no way they will allow construction of the massive trash dump in their back yard, but they are battling tremendous odds.

Never in the history of the county has a proposal to build a landfill been shot down, although prior plans were always scaled down in size before approval, county officials say.

“We’d like to be the first to get one rejected,” said Jeff Kolin, former director of public works who is now heading the city’s fight against the landfill, as he pounded his fist on his desk during an interview.

A scaled-down version of the dump would also be unacceptable because once opened, a smaller landfill could expand.

“We think that it’s a kind of get-your-foot-in-the-door strategy,” Kolin said.

Santa Clarita officials say the garbage dump, which would be operated jointly by the city and the county, would pollute the ground water and generally degrade the area with extra dust, odors and dump-truck traffic.

The May 31 meeting is the only opportunity for opponents of the landfill to voice their opinions before the county’s Regional Planning Commission. A hearing for Elsmere proponents was held Downtown on May 10.

The arguments presented at the two hearings, along with information gathered from a field trip by county officials to the proposed site, will be forwarded to the County Board of Supervisors for consideration.

As part of Santa Clarita’s anti-dump campaign, the city has printed 35,000 flyers, 7,000 postcards and 50,000 door-hangers that are being distributed by volunteers and by hired hands, Kolin said.

The city will air 30-second spots 80 times this month on a local cable station, said Gail Foy, public information officer for Santa Clarita. In addition, the city has paid for anti-landfill advertisements on Domino’s pizza boxes.

“We want to get the message out three, four different times,” Foy said.

But Ken Kazarian, president of the Elsmere Corp. and vice chairman of BKK Corp., the developers that have proposed the landfill, said, “It’s an awful lot of money to spend on a public hearing.”

“If the citizens of Santa Clarita are going to allow their City Council to spend that kind of money, then it’s OK,” he said.

Kazarian said the city apparently was trying to make up for the poor showing of residents at a public hearing held by the U.S. Forest Service on the issue last month in Castaic. The landfill proposal would require a swap of county land with a part of Angeles National Forest.

“I think they were embarrassed with the turnout for the Forest Service open house,” Kazarian said. “I think the count was somewhere around a hundred.”

Kazarian and BKK officials have long said the landfill will incorporate modern designs that will be a safeguard against environmental problems.

Local environmental groups have joined the struggle against the landfill.

The Save the Angeles Foundation held a rally Thursday night to kick off its door-to-door campaign to get residents to sign a pledge that they will attend next week’s hearing.

The foundation had invited neighborhood representatives and block captains to the rally, where they passed out refrigerator magnets, posters and flyers announcing the “last chance to keep the world’s largest dump out of Santa Clarita.”

With her 10-month-old baby in her arms and her 7-year-old daughter clinging shyly to her, Theresa Stewart, 38, stood in line to pick up her canvassing packet of pledge sign-up sheets, flyers, magnets and posters.

“We’re going to go all over our neighborhood,” she said.

Behind her was Hugo Martin, 35, who is a block captain at the Valencia Vista Condominiums. Martin said he was concerned about the canyons because he enjoys mountain biking in the area.

Before the audience of about 40 canvassers, Councilwoman Jan Heidt offered some playful suggestions on how to get members of the community to sign up to attend, including that old-fashioned motivator, guilt: “Tell them there won’t be a future for your grandchildren.”

Mayor Jo Ann Darcy, who was also at the meeting, made plans to accompany canvassers for at least four hours and more if her schedule allows.

“We’re gonna win this,” she said in an interview just after the rally. “It’s a war.”