Petition Assemblyman to Close Lopez Canyon

* The fate of the Lopez Canyon dump site is before the Los Angeles City Council for the umpteenth time.

At one time, Valley rubbish was dumped into city sites outside the Valley. Lopez Canyon was established as a dump site to reduce the amount of rubbish dumped at Mission Canyon and other city sites as well to reduce costs by dumping Valley rubbish closer to home.

However, today all those other sites are closed and Lopez Canyon, instead of just taking its share, as had been agreed, is forced to accept 85% of all the city’s rubbish.

Years ago, the county Sanitation District estimated that it would add $7 million a year to L.A.’s rubbish disposal costs if we closed down Mission Canyon and other city sites. That didn’t phase council members who didn’t want dumps in their district, irrespective of cost. Yet one of their main arguments against closing Lopez Canyon is that it will increase the cost of disposing of L.A.’s rubbish substantially.

When the City Council closed a rubbish dump in an affluent area of Granada Hills, I didn’t hear council members complain about the added cost that would create. At the same time, Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council instructed the city attorney to oppose Lopez Canyon’s neighbors and keep the Lopez Canyon dump site open. A compromise was reached that gave the city an extension of five years with a firm commitment that Lopez Canyon would be closed in 1996.

The city hasn’t done anything to close down Lopez Canyon as it had promised. Now it is asking for another extension. “Justice and domestic tranquillity?” Such gall.

Unbelievable but true, the city attorney, at the request of the mayor and the City Council, not only spent thousands of tax dollars to keep Lopez Canyon open as a city dump site, but he also spent thousands of tax dollars and several years in court to prevent the county from opening Sunshine Canyon, a dump site on L.A. County property, adjacent to the Granada Hills site that was closed. Sunshine Canyon will save the city money. It will minimize, if not eliminate, the added cost resulting from closing the Garanda Hills dump.

If the city is looking to save money by keeping Lopez Canyon open, which it must not do, it could save a considerable amount of money by reopening Mission Canyon and some of the other closed city dumps. They still have plenty of capacity for rubbish.

The Rustic and Sullivan canyons in the Santa Monica Mountains were purchased many years ago by the L.A. County Sanitation District to be used as future dump sites. To quell that idea, Assemblyman Terry Friedman had state legislation adopted with City Council support that would prohibit converting those canyons into rubbish dumps. I recommend that Lopez Canyon neighbors petition their assemblyman, Richard Katz, to introduce similar legislation that will close down Lopez Canyon as a dump site and prohibit it from ever being used as a rubbish dump site. Assemblyman Katz’s constituents are entitled to no less than what Assemblyman Freidman produced for his.

ERNANI BERNARDI

Lopez Canyon

Bernardi is a former Los Angeles city councilman.