Ruling Fuels Dispute Between Landfill, Water Supplier

Casting further doubt that the decade-old argument between an Azusa landfill owner and the San Gabriel Basin Watermaster will ever be resolved, the two sides this week are disagreeing about who won a recent lawsuit.

The Watermaster, which oversees underground water supplies throughout much of the San Gabriel Valley, on Thursday declared Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert O’Brien’s Aug. 12 ruling a victory for local water agencies, said Carol Williams, a Watermaster spokeswoman.

“The judge ruled that the [Azusa Land Reclamation] Landfill must comply with the California Environmental Quality Act before it may continue to accept municipal solid waste,” she said.

Such compliance would mean writing an environmental impact report to assess the 80-acre dump’s possible effects on an aquifer that lies below the landfill and provides drinking water to more than 1 million San Gabriel Valley residents.

But attorneys and spokesmen for the landfill’s owners, Browning-Ferris Industries, said the ruling is vague.

“It could mean a lot of different things,” said Arnie Berghoff, a Browning-Ferris spokesman. “The judge did not order us to stop [dumping].”

As his words were debated Thursday, O’Brien did not step in to clarify, stating only that his discussion of the case would be illegal.

Watermaster filed the lawsuit against the State Water Resources Board for granting Browning-Ferris permission to continue dumping above the already polluted aquifer, Berghoff said.

“There has never been any evidence of liquids leaking into [the aquifer] from the site,” Berghoff said. “Most studies show that all the pollution comes from World War II war machinery that was manufactured [in surrounding areas].”

But until an official environmental impact report lays out the quarry-turned-dump’s effects on the water, Watermaster is not willing to take any chances.

By granting the petition, the judge made it clear that the company should cease dumping into the 80-acre unlined landfill until the report is complete, said Watermaster attorney Burton J. Gindler.