New Extension Recommended for Lopez Dump : Waste: Bureau of Sanitation wants five years. Board’s one-year recommendation may appease some foes.

In a partial victory for opponents of the Lopez Canyon landfill, the Los Angeles Board of Public Works recommended Friday against extending the life of the dump by five years, opting instead to seek a one-year extension.

The unanimous decision came after Councilman Richard Alarcon, a longtime critic of the dump in his northeast San Fernando Valley district, assailed the proposed five-year extension, charging that sanitation officials have vastly overestimated the amount of trash that the landfill can accept--a charge sanitation officials reject.

“The bottom line is this: Lopez Canyon is a sham,” he told the appointed panel that oversees landfill operations in the city. “You need to close Lopez Canyon.”

Rejecting the city Bureau of Sanitation’s request for a five-year extension, the Board of Public Works recommended to the Planning Commission and, ultimately, the City Council, that the landfill remain open for one year after its scheduled February, 1996, closing date. A final decision by the council is expected in August.

The board also instructed sanitation officials to investigate Alarcon’s claims and continue to study other trash disposal alternatives. The board voted to request $300,000 from the council to pay for additional studies.

“I think there may be other options and other companies looking to take this refuse,” said J.P. Ellman, chair of the Board of Public Works. “I want to leave no stone unturned.”

*

The decision is the latest chapter in a long, bitter battle between residents in the northeast Valley who have complained for years about the odors and truck traffic generated by the landfill, and sanitation officials who say the cost of extending the landfill is lower than the cost of hauling waste to distant dumps.

The city collects and dumps about 5,000 tons of refuse per day, most of which ends up in the city-owned Lopez Canyon landfill near Lake View Terrace. According to sanitation officials, the 400-acre landfill will have room for more than 3 million tons of trash once the current permit expires next year.

The latest controversy was sparked last year when a study suggested that the city could save up to $72 million by keeping the landfill open until 2001. Based on that study, sanitation officials recommended the extension.

Alarcon and other opponents protested, saying any extension violates a provision in the landfill’s permit that says the city would not seek an extension after 1996. Alarcon also charged that the study was based on out-of-date cost estimates on trash disposal alternatives.

City officials agreed that the study was flawed and hired a private accounting firm, Macias & Co. of Los Angeles, to recalculate the savings projection. Based on new calculations by Macias & Co. and up-to-date cost estimates by private trash haulers, sanitation officials estimated in April that the city would actually save $56 million by keeping the landfill open.

But on Friday, Alarcon questioned the accuracy of the latest study, saying sanitation officials failed to calculate a huge upsurge in concrete, rocks, broken masonry and other such earthquake debris entering the landfill.

Based on calculations and estimates by his staff, Alarcon said the landfill has only 1.7 million tons of capacity, instead of the 3.3 million tons estimated by sanitation officials.

He said the lower capacity would mean that the landfill would be full long before 2001, and that the Macias report is based on faulty estimates.

“What this says is that the Macias report is bogus,” Alarcon told the board.

But Drew Sones, assistant director of the Bureau of Sanitation, told the board that Alarcon’s calculations are wrong. He said the bureau has kept track of the upsurge in inert quake debris and that he stands by the bureau’s capacity estimates.

In an interview after the meeting, Sones said part of the reason the dump’s capacity is still high is that some of the gravel and broken concrete hauled to the landfill has been recycled and used to build roads and to make other improvements nearby.

*

Nonetheless, members of the Board of Public Works said there were too many unanswered questions to proceed with the five-year extension recommended by sanitation officials. Although the board recommended a one-year extension, it did not rule out seeking another extension if the city can’t find a cost-effective alternative in the interim.

For some landfill opponents, the decision did not go far enough.

Noah Modisett, chairman of the citizens solid waste advisory group, said the city should close the landfill once and for all next year and immediately begin using an alternative dump.

He compared the landfill to a sinking boat and urged the board to abandon the ship and “stop trying to fix the leaks.”