Compensation for Residents Near Dump Called Failure

By TIM MAY

June 25, 1995 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

LAKE VIEW TERRACE —

It’s been called a buyout, a payoff, a slush fund and a bribe.

But whatever it’s labeled, most residents of this eclectic area of horse ranches and blight say that taking $5 million from the city of Los Angeles in exchange for living within smelling distance of Lopez Canyon Landfill was like making a deal with the devil.

Established in 1991 when the landfill’s operating permit was extended another five years, the so-called amenities fund remains the only one of its kind in the county and is widely considered a failed social experiment.

Most of the money is gone--spent not on remedying the odor, noise and traffic of the landfill, but on things such as buying a Pacoima warehouse for a police anti-gang program, college scholarships, and a traffic signal. And though most of those responsible for allocating the money say they tried to spend it wisely, neighbors of the 400-acre dump say they have not been compensated in any way for their hardship.

“The amenities monies are a joke,” said Barbara Hubbard, former chair of the Lopez Canyon Community Amenities Trust Fund advisory committee.

Offering homeowners money to ease the pain of a “locally unpopular land use”--or LULU in the vernacular of urban planners--has been tried in various ways in several states and generally hasn’t worked very well, experts say.

“This country has been very original about inventing these kinds of payoffs,” said Frank Popper, an urban studies professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “It’s a lot better to try to mitigate a LULU than to compensate communities for them, which is simply just paying them off.”

A better approach, in Popper’s view, could include lowering property taxes in the landfill’s immediate neighborhood, where property values are perceived to be lowered by the dump. Such a deal is in place at a landfill near Washington, D.C., said Popper, who coined the term LULU.

In contrast, he cited a rural community in Virginia whose residents were initially tempted by a cash offer from a hazardous-waste disposal company with plans for a dump. But as word spread of the proposed consolation prize, skepticism and resentment prevailed, and a tentative agreement fell through.

“In these kinds of situations, nobody’s happy with the results,” Popper said. “It ends up feeling like a bribe, and the money isn’t enough.”

Similar doubts are spreading belatedly through Lake View Terrace. Controversy over its 20-year-old landfill has arisen anew as public works officials this month recommended extending its use for at least another year and possibly mollifying neighbors with more cash. The landfill’s operating permit expires next February.

The original Lopez Canyon amenities funds--created with the promise that no further landfill extensions would be approved--have been used on a potpourri of causes with the broad goal of improving the area’s quality of life. But many say the fund, which was unprecedented at the time in Los Angeles, has done nothing to relieve the environmental problems and emotional friction created by the last city-owned garbage dump in operation.

Uses have included summer day camps, painting an elementary school, grants to a local garden club and baseball league, and buying a new traffic signal to alleviate congestion near a popular swap meet. In addition, $886,000 was spent to buy a deteriorated warehouse in Pacoima for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Jeopardy anti-gang program, and $1 million was set aside for a proposed library.

Few contend that the money has been misspent. But many, including City Councilman Richard Alarcon, say it was used for improvements that cannot be considered amenities or even extras, but instead are crucial parts of a well-functioning community.

“It was not an effective trade. It was a buy-off of conscience,” said Alarcon, who added that he will not even consider asking for more amenities funds if the landfill’s use continues.

In some cases, the money was spent on projects that would have been funded through conventional channels, Alarcon and others said. Building a new library in the Lake View Terrace area, for example, was a priority for the Los Angeles Library Department even before $1 million in amenities funds was set aside for that purpose, advisory board members and library officials said.

“Give the money to us or not, it made no difference,” said Hubbard. “We ended up paying for things the city would have done anyway.”

Each expenditure was approved by the City Council, they said, adding that such improvements might not have come about for years had residents waited for the wheels of government to turn in their direction.

The darker side of such funds is their discretionary nature and the potential to create division over how the money is spent, said Popper and Barbara Fine, former chair of the city’s Solid Waste Citizens Advisory Group.

The question of how to fairly allocate such funds also detracts from the larger question of how to remedy the impact of the landfill, said Rutgers’ Popper.

“Compensation opens up many moral questions and complications,” he said. “Why give money to one baseball league and not another? Why baseball and not soccer?”

Such competing interests are starting to resurface in Lake View Terrace, where those who favor accepting more amenities funds from the city and those who would rather forgo them seem divided along socioeconomic lines.

While residents of the wooded canyons and hills around Lopez Canyon are adamantly opposed to the idea of accepting more amenities funds tied to any future dump extension, those living in neglected neighborhoods feel otherwise.

“I say we ask for another million dollars more per year this time,” said Jesus Barragan, whose front yard is about 400 feet from the base of the landfill. With talk of a new permit for the landfill, Barragan said, the time is ripe to increase the fund.

“We need a community pool. We need a cultural center. We need more money for our schools and for sports programs. For another million more a year, I say, the trash can come.”

At least one member of the fund’s advisory committee, Julieta McKay, agrees. If a new landfill permit is approved, McKay said she hopes Alarcon will press for more amenities.

“If we can have the amenities doubled, I think we can work things outand have a better place to live,” she said.

Amenities funds are typically associated with housing developers who pay fees to municipalities in exchange for development permits and construction rights.

But planners say these funds are established out of necessity, to accommodate the influx of people requiring new schools, roads, sewers, parks and other public facilities. In the post-Proposition 13 world, cash-strapped government officials consider it only fair that developers pitch in.

At the planned 7,200-unit Ritter Ranch housing development near Palmdale, for example, the developer is paying for about $40 million in park and recreation facilities, including a golf course, as well as a new city hall, library and fire station.

Just as housing developers have done for years, companies or governments responsible for LULUs such as landfills and prisons are increasingly trying to soften the blow with some kind of remedial benefit or cash.

Deals known as “host agreements” have become popular in such states as Maine and Rhode Island, where city officials have insisted that landfill operators make payments into an insurance fund that helps cover the costs of any dump-related environmental damage.

Despite the disappointment over the Lopez Canyon amenity fund, the practice seems to be growing, said Maribel Marin, a researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group.

“I think that, as time goes by, you’re going to see more and more amenity-type deals being swung,” Marin said. “Considering that a landfill is a liability, . . . I think it’s only fair that communities should get something in exchange for that.”

Although the ultimate value of any amenities fund may be hard to measure, the Lopez Canyon money has benefited some people living near the dump.

Joyce Oldaker, a 40-year-old single mother of three, has received a $400 scholarship to Mission College for the past three semesters out of the amenities funds. In return, she has helped teach evening computer courses to adults at Fenton Elementary School.

“It can’t take away the damage of the dump, but for me, it meant a chance to go back to school,” Oldaker said.

Los Angeles police say the Pacoima warehouse where they run a Jeopardy program has hosted more than 2,000 teen-agers in the last 18 months. The youths have participated in boxing, drama, dance, job training and counseling programs.

“If we didn’t have this facility, we’d be working out of a little room in the station, and everything we’d do would be off-site,” said Police Detective Richard Knapp. “We’d lose track of most of the kids. Here, we see them day in, day out. It’s made a difference.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Fund Use Ranges From Large to Small

The following are some of the expenditures since creation of the Lopez Canyon Landfill amenities fund in March, 1991.

1. Proposed library: $1,000,000.

2. LAPD Jeopardy program in Pacoima: $886,000

3. Lake View Terrace Recreation Center expansion: $870,000

4. Ernani Bernardi Scholarship Fund: $265,000

5. Dexter Park upgrade: $250,000

6. Air-conditioning, Brainard Elementary School: $203,400

7. Painting of Fenton Elementary School: $172,625

8. Lake View Terrace Summer Day Camps: $129,083

9. Traffic signal, Foothill Boulevard: $72,000