Senate Parks Bill Vote Blocks Elsmere Dump

In a move that is being viewed as a deathblow to the proposed Elsmere Canyon Landfill, the U.S. Senate on Thursday adopted a provision in its federal parks legislation that effectively blocks development of the contentious 720-acre dump.

The measure, surreptitiously inserted by Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), effectively kills the project that opponents argued would have spoiled the area’s pristine wilderness.

The 190-million-ton landfill was designed to operate for 50 years and was to be a major repository for trash from Los Angeles County. Since 1987 when it was proposed, the landfill had been opposed by Santa Clarita officials, community activists and environmentalists.

The provision approved by the Senate mentions by name neither Elsmere Canyon nor BKK Corp., the waste hauler who wanted to develop the landfill. It simply prohibits the secretary of agriculture from transferring any part of the Angeles National Forest out of federal ownership for use as a solid waste landfill.

Such a land transfer had been a critical part of the Elsmere Canyon plan. BKK had sought to use a portion of federal parkland for the landfill in exchange for private land of comparable value that the company would donate to the federal government.

By quietly adding the Elsmere Canyon language to the massive parks bill in recent months, McKeon was able to outflank the aggressive lobbyists for the BKK Corp., which for years has been pushing to develop the canyon just east of the city of Santa Clarita.

BKK acknowledged that McKeon had outfoxed them and that the proposed project is now all but dead.

But company officials said they may be back in the future with other plans, which they would not disclose, to address a lack of space for the region’s garbage.

It was that landfill crisis that prompted a variety of local cities to support the Elsmere dump, all but Santa Clarita that would have had to live next door to 190 million tons of garbage.

“The loser here is the process,” said Ron Gastelum, chief administrative officer for Torrance-based BKK. “We play by the rules and we expect to win or lose by the rules, not by political maneuvers in this fashion. We’ll have to go back and look at our options.”

Waste hauler Browning-Ferris Industries is also mulling its options. BKK sold its land to BFI in a deal announced last fall, although it retains a financial interest in the Elsmere project.

In an interview Thursday, a BFI official said it was too early to determine the fate of company-owned land in the canyon.

“We don’t know,” said Arnie Berghoff, vice president of government affairs. “BFI acquired the property just about 10 days ago. What we’ve always said and we will continue to say is that we’re going to review that project and make a business decision on that project somewhere down the line.”

But Berghoff called the parks bill “bad public policy” and criticized legislators for acting outside standard procedures.

“The Congress is not elected to make local decisions, and essentially that’s what this bill does,” he said.

The impact of the absence of the proposed landfill will depend on what happens with other landfills, he said. Recently, a number of landfills have closed.

The BKK landfill in West Covina closed Sept. 15. Lopez Canyon closed in July, and Wednesday a BFI landfill in Azusa closed, Berghoff said.

“At some point, and I think we’re coming to that point soon, the county of Los Angeles is going to be running out of landfill capacity.”

In August, a BFI landfill in Sunshine Canyon began operating, but only on the county side.

Plans are underway to open the portion of the landfill that rests on city-owned land.

“If we’re able to get that landfill permitted and operating we’ll be able to have a landfill that will serve the needs of Los Angeles citizens for a good 25 to 30 years,” Berghoff said.

Hopeful that they could at last end their battle against the landfill, Santa Clarita city officials hailed the congressional action.

“A few years ago . . . we never dreamed that this was a possibility,” said George Caravalho, the city manager. “To see it happen, this is just an incredible feat.”

Mayor Carl Boyer called the move “a huge step forward” in rethinking how to handle garbage. Instead of piling it up in massive landfills, Boyer said, officials have to focus on alternatives such as composting, recycling and hauling the garbage to remote areas by rail.

“I’m ecstatic,” Boyer said.

McKeon’s efforts to add the Elsmere Canyon language without attracting the attention of company lobbyists began at the Republican National Convention in August. There, McKeon cornered Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), who chairs the Senate’s key environmental committee. It was Murkowski who first told McKeon about the parks bill set to clear Congress at the end of the year.

Back in Washington, McKeon rounded up support from two other key lawmakers--Rep. Don Young (R-Ark.), chairman of the House’s environmental committee, and Rep. James V. Hansen (R-Utah), chairman of the national parks subcommittee.

After successfully inserting his key paragraph in the parks legislation--in between provisions dealing with Rocky Mountain National Park and the Grand Lake Cemetery in Colorado--McKeon then had to keep it quiet. He told officials in the city of Santa Clarita not to bring it up during a recent trip they took to Washington.

BKK--which has spent millions of dollars pushing the project and had hired an impressive list of heavy hitters to represent them in Washington--discovered the measure earlier this week, after the House had already passed the parks bill and too late to remove it.

“They stuck it in in the dead of night and now they’re crowing about it,” said Gastelum.

“If one has any belief in the normal congressional process, presumably meritorious bills are accepted [without trickery] and unmeritorious bills are rejected.”

McKeon had failed in two more traditional attempts to block the Elsmere project. He introduced a bill several years ago that would have blocked the land swap. But that was when he and his fellow Republicans were in the minority, unable to move legislation through the process.

Last year, with his party running the place, McKeon pushed another Elsmere bill. It cleared the House but became bogged down in the Senate.