Valley Perspective : Closing Lopez Canyon Dump Sets Stage for More Enlightened Plan

Although many viewed the effort to close Lopez Canyon Landfill as a battle based on knee-jerk NIMBYism, the recent City Council decision to shut down the facility July 1 represents a giant leap forward for the entire city by setting the stage for a more responsible solid waste management system. Closing the landfill is a clear victory for the Northeast San Fernando Valley community. Empowered with the knowledge that it can prevail in controversial issues that affect the quality of life, the Northeast Valley can face future battles with greater confidence.

However, the coalition of community, environmental, religious and academic groups--including the Lake View Terrace community, VOICE (Valley Organized in Community Efforts), Sierra Club, Californians Against Waste and many other organizations--was driven by a greater goal.

To the dismay and confusion of our opponents, the coalition also included the communities that oppose reopening Sunshine Canyon landfill near Granada Hills and the proposed landfill at Elsmere Canyon in Santa Clarita. This support was key to the victory. Perhaps what our opponents did not understand was that all of these communities know that they must work together, that none of these landfills are needed, that the impacts are the same to each community and that better alternatives can be advocated.

In the closure of Lopez Canyon, there is another profound victory for the entire city of Los Angeles. Now that the contentious and wasteful battle is over, the various players, including community and environmental groups, city departments and elected officials, can redirect their energy toward establishing a superior waste management system.

I believe that it will become evident over the coming months and years that the legacy of the closure of the city’s last public landfill will be a greatly reduced waste stream and vastly improved solid resources management system that will achieve and exceed the city’s goal of 62% waste diversion by 2000.

Closure of Lopez Canyon is not just a local issue about a specific dump. Rather, it is a regional issue about a general policy. The real target for change is the antiquated waste management policy that the city has adhered to. That policy has always been to simply find someplace to dump it and make it go away. This must end.

The solid resources action plan that resulted from the council’s decision to close Lopez Canyon contains a series of “action steps” essential to further development of a comprehensive, integrated solid resources management system. These steps include increasing public education, establishing innovative technologies, creating incentives for new recycling businesses and many other good ideas.

The difficult task before us now is to develop a strategy to establish a long-term material management system that will bring greater equity and will minimize impact to communities and the environment citywide.

The “Three Rs” of enlightened, integrated solid resources management are “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Note that recycling comes third. This is not an accident. Recycling is a critical element of solid resources management, but reducing the amount of waste we generate in the first place is the single most important way to solve our material management problem. Ignoring the fact and scrambling to recycle the enormous volume we discard daily is not the best way to go.

The action steps would create jobs, improve the economy, protect the environment and conserve natural resources. They also would provide hope for communities such as Lake View Terrace, which has unfairly borne a disproportionate burden from our waste management policy. Until the city abandons its reliance on obsolete urban landfills, efforts to establish these new systems will only be undermined.

I am working with the community to develop a library in the Lake View Terrace / Pacoima area. The library will document the history of the Lopez Canyon Landfill and how the community fought to close it, and will serve as an Environmental Resource Center educating Northeast Valley residents about public health and environmental issues. I look forward to the day when an inquisitive young student will read, perplexed, about the old days when we used to dump everything we didn’t want. He or she will wonder how we could ever have been so shortsighted and wasteful, but will be comforted to read that we wised up at the end of the 20th century.