City Council OKs Dump's Expansion

By PATRICK McGREEVY

Dec. 9, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

A divided Los Angeles City Council voted final approval Wednesday to a zone change allowing Sunshine Canyon Landfill to expand into Granada Hills, despite angry and emotional testimony from neighbors who fear their health will be at risk.

More than 100 people packed the council chambers to oppose the zone change sought by Browning Ferris Industries. Immediately after the council’s 8-7 vote, opponents vowed to sue the city to overturn the action and threatened to mount recall campaigns against council members who supported the expansion.

“It wasn’t unexpected,” said Wayde Hunter, president of the North Valley Coalition, which led the opposition. “BFI has bought the City Council.”

He said BFI spent more than $450,000 on lobbyists and campaign contributions as it pressed for expansion approval.

After the raucous two-hour debate, Councilman Hal Bernson, who represents Granada Hills, said that his constituents were wronged.

“I’m going to join the lawsuit,” he said. “I think this is an action that is improper.”

One angry woman was carried from the council chambers by Los Angeles Police Department officers, and some other opponents sobbed openly, but most of the protesters shuffled from the meeting chanting “Recall! Recall!”

The zone change allows BFI to accept 55 million tons of trash on 194 acres in the city during the next 26 years. That is in addition to its existing dump operation on an adjacent 215 acres of land in unincorporated Los Angeles County.

The landfill had operated within the city from 1958 through 1991, when a zone variance expired.

The reopening of the dump in the city is necessary to handle the city’s trash for years to come and will be subjected to more than 250 conditions to protect residents who live nearby, said Arnie Berghoff, a spokesman for BFI.

“We’re pleased that the City Council did what is best for the entire city of Los Angeles,” Berghoff said. “They have ensured themselves that they will have an environmentally sound place to dump the city’s waste for the next quarter century.”

Berghoff said the operator still needs to change a county permit to reflect the larger landfill operation, and get routine administrative permits from state waste-management, water and air-quality agencies, before it opens the landfill in the city area in mid-2001.

He said BFI is anticipating having to defend the expansion in court.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski said the city is taking reasonable steps to protect neighbors, some of whom live about a mile from the nearest property line of the landfill.

Conditions include setting up a large buffer zone of open space between neighbors and the dump, monitoring air quality at nearby Van Gogh Elementary School, installing cameras at the dump to oversee operations, and a requirement that trash trucks using the dump will eventually be converted from diesel to clean fuels.

Councilman Joel Wachs countered: “All the conditions in the world don’t change the fact that you are putting a dump in somebody’s backyard.”

Wachs predicted the dump will be the council’s equivalent of the Los Angeles Board of Education’s Belmont Learning Center scandal, in which the proposed school site was belatedly found to have numerous environmental problems.

Mayor Richard Riordan has announced his support for the dump expansion, but will review an ordinance to make sure it provides reasonable protections for neighboring residents, said spokeswoman Jessica Copen.

Some opponents, believing a veto is unlikely, said Wednesday they plan to pursue a lawsuit alleging the city failed to conduct adequate studies of the environmental impacts of the project and did not follow proper procedures in approving the zone change.

Bernson said the city should have sought bids from other landfills willing to take the city’s trash, and added it might have cost only a little more to send trash out to remote desert dumps.

“We should be looking for alternatives that don’t impact schools and homes,” Bernson told his colleagues.

But Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said the city needs to accept responsibility for the 3,400 tons of trash it generates each day.

“The other major alternative has been putting it in somebody else’s backyard,” Galanter said.

Opponents said there are concerns that the landfill may pollute ground water and the air and cause serious health problems for neighbors. Some said there have already been a suspiciously high number of cancer cases in the area around the landfill.

“The lives of all of us are at stake,” said resident Mary Edwards, a leader of the North Valley Coalition.

Students from Van Gogh Elementary School in Granada Hills also testified against the landfill.

“At school we’ve had trash blow over our heads and hit us,” said Linas Sepikas, a fourth-grader.

A proposal by Bernson to require a health study before the expansion vote was rejected by the council after city officials said it would delay the zone change.

Chris Funk, an attorney for BFI, said an environmental report found that the landfill’s design will protect water supplies.

Opponents also said the landfill would not be needed if the city expanded its recycling program to include businesses and apartments.

Miscikowski and Galanter said they support currently pending proposals to look at expanding the city’s recycling program, but said such a change would not immediately relieve the need for a place to dump non-recyclable trash.

William Salle, an attorney who opposes the expansion, said residents of the area will meet within the next week to talk about mounting recall campaigns against those who voted for the dump. Salle said the first recall may be against Miscikowski, a leading voice for the landfill expansion.

Others said the vote will fuel the Valley secession movement.

Councilman Nate Holden had won council support last month for putting a 10-year cap on operation of the dump, but city planners said Wednesday that there was confusion over his intent, so they submitted an ordinance that instead requires a city review of dump operations after 10 years.

Planners said an ordinance including a cap would require 10 votes for approval, because it changes the Planning Commission’s recommendation, while the ordinance requiring a city review only needed eight votes.

Holden, who had previously indicated that he might support the expansion with the cap, was so miffed by the planners’ actions that he voted against the zone change.

How They Voted

This is how Los Angeles City Council members voted on the Sunshine Canyon Landfill expansion:

FOR

John Ferraro

Ruth Galanter

Mike Hernandez

Cindy Miscikowski

Nick Pacheco

Mark Ridley-Thomas

Rudy Svorinich Jr.

Rita Walters

AGAINST