Canyons Fall Off the List as Possible Sites for Landfills

Conservationists and residents living near some Santa Monica Mountains canyons no longer need worry about the county putting a garbage dump next door.

Formally killing off what was already regarded as an unlikely possibility, the Los Angeles County Public Works Department has officially eliminated the canyons as possible sites for county landfills.

County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky announced Monday that Harry W. Stone, public works director, had told him that he will not include the three canyons in the final drafts of the county’s landfill plans.

Stone said in a letter dated Nov. 4 to Yaroslavsky that federal law prohibits locating sites within a national park. Mission, Rustic and Sullivan canyons are in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a network of public and private holdings covering 150,000 acres from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

Using the scenic Mission Canyon as a backdrop, Yaroslavsky said Stone’s letter removes a nagging threat that has hovered over the mountains since 1957.

“Nobody could come up here to this site and be in their right mind and recommend that you turn this into a garbage dump,” he told a gathering of city and county officials, homeowners associations representatives, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) and newly elected Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks).

“The county is giving it up,” Hayden said.

Hayden credited a coalition of residents and public officials for the county’s decision.

Despite the hoopla on the mountain Monday, many of those involved already felt there was a slim chance of locating landfills in those three canyons.

“I don’t think the county has ever seriously considered them,” said Joe Haworth, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. “If we were seriously thinking about going out there with a landfill, the federal law would not be the highest hurdle for us.”

Carole B. Stevens, a long-time opponent of the landfills who was at Monday’s news conference, conceded that she has not been too worried. But she called the county’s decision significant because “it brings closure” to a long battle.

It also removes the threat that the U.S. Congress could repeal the federal law that prohibits putting landfills in national parks.

“There was always the threat,” she said.

The county purchased Mission Canyon as a dump site in the late 1950s, and it was used primarily for garbage from the city of Los Angeles until the City Council refused to renew the county’s permit for it in the 1970s, Haworth said. In the meantime, the county bought Rustic and Sullivan canyons as possible dump sites.

The prospect of putting landfills in the area has sparked an outpouring of opposition from homeowners, environmentalists, officials of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and others.

The county’s decision still leaves the question: What to do with the 38,000 tons of solid waste the people and industries of Los Angeles County generate each day?

Yaroslavsky said recycling has reduced the problem significantly in the last several years. Other landfill sites are still available, he said, and other alternatives, such as rail-hauling waste to desert sites, are being considered.