Activists at Meeting Trash Report That Backs Elsmere Dump

Anti-dump activists turned out for a public meeting Thursday night, criticizing county trash officials who recently concluded that a dump in Elsmere Canyon is one of the best options for trash disposal into the next century.

Residents attending a meeting at Valencia High School attacked a preliminary report highlighting the proposed 190-million-ton facility that would abut and consume part of Angeles National Forest on the edge of Santa Clarita.

Water board member Ed Dunn from Newhall took issue, for example, with claims that advanced technologies would make landfills safer.

“Remember the Titanic was high-tech and it was safe,” he said.

Santa Clarita city officials backed a campaign featuring door hangers, newspaper advertisements and telephone notification chains to encourage residents to attend the hearing by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and oppose the landfill proposed by BKK Corp. of Torrance.

Earlier hearings have underlined the city’s opposition, and activists such as Marsha McLean of the Santa Clarita Valley Canyons Preservation Committee insist the opposition will not fade. “Nobody has gone away and nobody is going away,” she said.

County officials, she said, “are simply hoping that with all these public meetings, their document will just be accepted. . . . You can’t do that anymore.”

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In an interview, Ron Gastelum, chief operating officer of BKK, dismissed the session as “an opportunity for the locals to do a little grandstanding” that would have no impact on the permit process.

“Santa Clarita is engaging in some self-delusion,” Gastelum said. “The worst that anyone can say is that [the landfill] is going to have a visual impact 15 to 20 years from now,” he said, adding that any development, such as housing, also has a visual impact.

Los Angeles County needs somewhere to take its trash and can’t depend on other counties to provide room, Gastelum argued.

“The future of Elsmere,” he said, “is still very much in the air.”

Jeff Kolin, Santa Clarita’s point man on anti-Elsmere efforts, said he feared the public works report on future waste disposal needs was written “by an agency committed to developing county landfills” to provide grounds to locate the landfill in Elsmere Canyon.

He argued that county planners failed to move aggressively to discuss other ways to dispose of trash. “Now they’re claiming we don’t have any other options than to expand landfills,” he said.

County officials counter that the document reflects a realistic look at future trash disposal. Mike Mohajer, an assistant division engineer for public works, said trash officials were only following state law in drafting the massive four-volume tome.

“Realistically, you have to make certain assumptions,” Mohajer said. “You cannot do everything under the very best scenario. What is going to happen if your very best scenario doesn’t materialize?”

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The report identifies four areas as possibilities for new landfill sites: Elsmere, Towsley, Blind, and Mission-Rustic-Sullivan canyons.

Elsmere and Towsley canyons are both on Santa Clarita’s outskirts. Blind Canyon, with a potential capacity of 130 million tons, is located in the Santa Susana Mountains overlapping parts of both Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The Mission-Rustic-Sullivan canyons site, with a potential capacity of 125 million tons, is located in the Sepulveda Pass of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Towsley and Blind canyons, however, are surrounded by land owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a parkland agency that would probably resist granting access to companies seeking to create dumps.

Although the report notes those problems, it fails to note that Elsmere has its host of difficulties as well. The draft report fails to mention both U.S. Forest Service opposition to the plan and pending federal legislation that would hinder putting a landfill in the canyon.

Making Elsmere Canyon a viable landfill site depends on a land swap involving 1,643 acres of Forest Service land adjacent to property owned by BKK. A bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) would prevent Forest Service land in Elsmere Canyon from ever becoming a dump.

The bill has passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.

City officials hoped that a strong showing at Thursday’s meeting--one of about a dozen being held throughout the county this month--might underline Santa Clarita’s opposition to the project.

Activists complained that the hearing date fell in the midst of spring religious holidays, cutting into attendance. The complaints prompted public works officials to schedule another hearing, this one to be held April 22, also at Valencia High School.

Even so, anti-dump activists seemed pessimistic that their remarks at any meeting would carry weight.

“I don’t think they really want input,” McLean said. “They’ve made up their minds.”