3,000 Protest Elsmere Canyon Dump : Public hearing: Santa Clarita residents urge county Planning Commission to oppose the landfill. Proponents claim political posturing.

The biggest landfill in the world was knocking hard on the door, and Santa Clarita residents, prodded by city officials fiercely opposed to the project, had just one chance, one public hearing, to tell Los Angeles County what they thought of 190 million tons of trash in their back yard.

The high school multipurpose room picked for a special meeting of the Los Angeles County Planning Commission to get comments on the project seated a maximum of 350, more than enough for the usual public meeting. But Wednesday evening, 3,000 local residents showed up with a message to convey to the commission: No thanks. No way. Not here.

As the meeting--devoted solely to opponents of the project and looking more like a pep rally--got under way, the thousands who could not fit into the room followed the proceedings via a public address system placed in the parking lot and a wide-screen TV flickering in the back of a pickup.

“It seems like the whole city has come,” said 32-year-old Maria Waschak, seven months pregnant and toting two of her four children.

The hearing was to center on the project’s mammoth Environmental Impact Report, which stated that the proposed landfill on 1,643 acres in Elsmere Canyon just southeast of the city would destroy many features of the waterfall- and trail-laden canyon. But the EIR also said the landfill would not pose the health or economic concerns suggested by critics.

Dozens of opponents, some of whom arrived in costume, carried placards with messages such as “Save 5 million years of Elsmere” and “Leave our children a forest, not a dump.” Others decried BKK Corp., the company proposing the landfill.

Susan Kemp and Amy Heiman of Valencia were wearing hospital scrubs, gauze and plastic face shields, what they called “the ‘Outbreak’ look.”

“These are the garments your children will have to wear” if the dump is approved, Heiman said.

Another protester, Shirley Later, added: “I used to live in Granada Hills, so I know what a landfill can do to a neighborhood.” The Sunshine Canyon Landfill north of Granada Hills has also been the subject of controversy.

Hundreds of residents on hand signed up to speak their piece before the Planning Commission, which will eventually give its recommendation on the project to the County Board of Supervisors. The speakers included geologists, seismologists, biologists and politicians.

Some expressed concern that toxins from the landfill could seep into the ground water if the dump’s liner were to rupture during an earthquake. Others claimed that the area is home to endangered species, including the California condor.

Walt Disney Co. officials were on hand to tell commissioners that lights and activity at a landfill would seriously disrupt the filming the company does in an adjacent canyon.

“Local impact should not be outweighed by regional needs,” said Jeff Kolin, the Santa Clarita official heading the city’s opposition to the landfill.

Proponents of the landfill had their say at a similar Planning Commission meeting last month. But at that meeting, only about a dozen people showed up. Some attending were east San Fernando Valley residents who said they hoped landfills near their neighborhoods would be shut down if Elsmere got the go-ahead from county officials.

The battle over the project began in earnest in 1987, when BKK Corp. first proposed buying the canyon from the U. S. Forest Service for about $70 million. The plan was for the cash-strapped Forest Service to use that money to buy two parcels of privately owned land that would be added to Angeles National Forest.

BKK officials said from the beginning that the project would aid the county by easing the strain on other dump sites, many of which were quickly filling.

Many in the suburban Santa Clarita community, however, balked at a round-the-clock operation where 1,100 garbage trucks would disgorge 16,500 tons of trash a day for the next 50 years. Many also didn’t like the idea that Elsmere would usurp a New York landfill--called Fresh Kills--as the single largest managed trash dump in the world.

In preparation for this hearing, Santa Clarita sent out thousands of flyers and sponsored local television and radio spots. The large attendance was openly orchestrated. Environmentalists joined City Council members to knock on doors, asking people to sign a pledge to attend. Students toted home notices of the hearing along with their homework.

Ken Kazarian, president of the Elsmere Corp., a division of BKK, commented before the meeting that Santa Clarita officials were whipping up a froth of fear without cause.

“The city has spent millions trying to turn it into a political process,” he said, adding that “no amount of political posturing and emotion is going to break this project.”

Both sides have committed themselves financially. City officials say they have spent $1.2 million to date--including $20,000 to promote Wednesday’s hearing--and set aside another $900,000 to pay future legal fees. So far, BKK Corp. has invested over $20 million on the Elsmere project, Kazarian said.

As the crowd swelled into the evening and cars continued pouring into the high school parking lot, Kolin was asked if the city’s investment in promoting the hearing was money well spent.

“Damn right,” he said.

Slater is a Times staff writer and Becker is a correspondent.