Waterproofing Waste

On a typical day, about 15,000 tons of garbage is hauled to one of the eight landfills in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys and buried. When all goes well, it’s a one-way trip, with the garbage never to be seen again.

When all doesn’t go well--such as in the heavy, El Nino-type rains predicted for this winter--landfill operators are faced with their hardest test: “washouts,” which occur when the rains erode the landfills and garbage pours through streams and storm drains to the ocean. Or ground water is contaminated, a problem regulators say takes years to clean up.

“At the very first hint of El Nino, I had my inspectors go and find out what was happening at the landfills,” said Richard Hanson, chief of the solid-waste management program for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. “I think all the landfills are ready and have been ready.”

Washouts are rare, but they do happen. In 1982, the city of Los Angeles’ Lopez Canyon Landfill washed out and sent trash down Kagel Canyon toward San Fernando--one reason that dump is now closed. In December 1991, part of the BKK Landfill in West Covina washed out, sending a stream of mud through a nearby shopping mall.

In 1992, a storm eroded the cover of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill near Val Verde, and garbage cascaded out in a fan-shaped spill.

“By far the worst case of erosion I’ve ever seen,” said Rod Nelson, head of the ground-water regulatory unit for the L.A. region of the California Water Quality Control Board.

No trash left the landfill’s property, but if it had, the Santa Clara River is less than a mile away. The river flows to the ocean and also feeds the underground water sources that supply drinking water to some Ventura County residents.

“If water goes through landfills, it can get contaminated,” says Beth Erlanson, a project engineer with the Los Angeles County Sanitation District. “That’s why we divert water from landfills. Because sooner or later that water has to go somewhere, whether it’s to the ocean or to water that people drink.”

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Water and landfills are a poor mix. Yet, many landfills are located in the mountains--the places in Southern California where historically it rains the most.

Both Sunshine Canyon and Chiquita Canyon are on the western fringes of the San Gabriel Mountains. The writer John McPhee, in his essay “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” points out that storms slamming into the steep San Gabriels trigger some of the most concentrated rainfall in the United States. “The oddity of this,” writes McPhee, “is about as intense as the rain.”

The most extreme example in the San Fernando Valley occurred on Jan. 25, 1969, when the National Weather Service’s Big Tujunga Station recorded 11.52 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. During those same 24 hours, it rained 3.43 inches at the L.A. Civic Center.

It wasn’t a freak storm. In 1973 and again in 1974, the Big Tujunga Station received more than 9 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.

Federal law says that all landfills must have drainage systems capable of withstanding strong storms. California law is even tougher, and Los Angeles County law takes it one step further, requiring landfills to prepare for even moderate storms after a fire has scorched surrounding hillsides. Rain runs off burned hills quicker and carries more sediment, which can clog storm drain channels.

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On a rainy winter morning, Dan Tempelis stands in a conference room, pointing to an aerial photo of Sunshine Canyon Landfill. Tempelis is a district vice president and project engineer with Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., which operates the landfill, and it’s his job to make sure the trash doesn’t float away this winter.

“The whole idea is to keep this part dry,” says Tempelis, pointing to the landfill. “Because if a big storm goes into the landfill, it’s got to come out.”

The aerial photo shows that in its natural state, Sunshine Canyon had three seasonal creeks that converged where the second landfill is now located. To correct this problem, BFI engineers adopted a common strategy--slow down the water, divert it from the landfill, knock the silt out of it and then send it back on its way.

To slow the water, BFI built a dam at the bottom of each creek. The dams divert the water into a concrete-lined storm channel that surrounds the entire perimeter of the landfill. The channel then sends the water into a huge collection basin, which collects the silt, slows the water again and then returns it to its natural drainage.

From there, the water travels to county storm channels.

“We’re required to put that water back into its natural drainage at a speed no greater than if the landfill wasn’t here,” says Tempelis. “That’s because the county storm channels are designed to accommodate certain amounts of water over certain periods of time all the way down to Long Beach.”

It is inevitable that some water will saturate the landfill and become contaminated by the garbage. This water is called leachate. BFI, like all landfill operators, pumps out the leachate, treats it and stores it. Later, the water is used to irrigate anti-erosion landscaping and to water dusty roads to prevent air pollution.

Some goes to a small, seemingly misplaced, rose garden overlooking the landfill.

“The neighbors wouldn’t think so, but Sunshine Canyon is one of the better landfills,” says Nelson, of the state water quality board. “They have all of the state-of-the-art technology.”

Tempelis has heard much criticism from the landfill’s neighbors in Granada Hills. But he believes the landfill is prepared for El Nino.

“I have five engineers on staff and we have a county inspector on site every hour that we operate,” says Tempelis. “We’ve built this thing of dirt, but there’s a lot of quality control and engineering that goes into this dirt.”

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Another complication: Dumps are often found in canyons. Living below the canyons--which is to say downstream--are people. Granada Hills is below Sunshine Canyon. A subdivision sits below Calabasas Landfill. Residents live downhill from the Antelope Valley Landfill in Palmdale and Scholl Canyon Landfill in Glendale.

This is one reason landfills are so heavily regulated. Sylvia Glazer oversees the city of Burbank’s landfill, and when she’s asked to name the agencies she must answer to, there’s a slight pause and then she runs down a long roster.

“Let’s see,” says Glazer, “the state’s Integrated Waste Management Board, their local enforcement agency, the County Department of Health, the county’s Bureau of Sanitation, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the federal EPA. Burbank also has its own laws dealing with noise and construction.”

Despite the number of agencies regulating landfills, there are critics who insist the oversight is insufficient.

“The regulatory agencies are not known for their courage in dealing with landfills,” says Patricia Schifferle, spokeswoman for Clean Water Action, a national advocacy group attempting to block the expansion of Chiquita Canyon Landfill.

“There have been numerous problems at Chiquita Canyon, but the landfill mostly gets a slap on the wrist,” she said.

Regulators contend that both landfill operations and regulatory oversight have drastically improved in the last two decades. “There were a lot of rules on the books 15 years ago, but landfills sometimes just didn’t comply,” says Hanson, of the county health department.

“[Regulators] were not as stringent as they are now and didn’t enforce rules as they do now.”

Hanson also says that as recently as 15 years ago, there were some landfills in the county where washouts were common in big rains. Hanson declined to specify which landfills those were, but said, “I think these sites are now just as good as any other site.”

One big difference, says Hanson, is that opening new landfills nowadays is almost a political impossibility. The garbage just keeps coming and coming, yet it has few places to go. Thus, to make money, landfill operators need to keep their current sites open by complying with the rules.

Ed Kavazanjian, a landfill designer and part owner of GeoSyntec, a Huntington Beach environmental and civil engineering firm, offers a related theory: “With all the attention and hype El Nino is getting, landfill operators know if they get caught with their pants down this year, there will be hell to pay.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Valley-area landfills

1. Antelope Valley

2. Lancaster

3. Chiquita Canyon

4. Sunshine Canyon

5. Calabasas

6. Bradley

7. Burbank

8. Scholl Canyon