Valley Landfill Expansion OKd by Commission

After a seven-hour hearing Thursday on the perils and promises of burying garbage, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission unanimously approved expansion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill into 494 acres in Granada Hills.

More than 20 residents of the surrounding neighborhood testified against widening the dump, arguing it threatened the air and water, could not be adequately protected from earthquakes and sometimes littered the area with windblown trash.

Browning-Ferris Industries, the landfill operator, countered each objection with a stable of scientific experts who painstakingly explained leachate-collection systems, seismic standards and other features designed to make the dump a safe neighbor.

“I have the unmistakable feeling I’ve been thrown into the George Orwell novel ‘1984’ . . . where war is peace and love is hate,” said one frustrated Granada Hills resident, William Salle.

The landfill straddles the city/county border in the north San Fernando Valley. BFI already has county permission to deposit 6,000 tons of garbage per day in the county section.

The commission’s decision, if approved by the City Council, would allow BFI to dump 55-million tons of trash in the city portion of the landfill over the next 26 years. Some of the roughly 200 conditions approved Thursday require BFI to maintain a 100-acre buffer zone between the landfill and the homes to the south and to put up a $3-million security bond to fund community protection if BFI fails to comply with its promises.

Longtime opponent and council member Hal Bernson criticized the Planning Department’s description of the proposed expansion, saying it “sounded like it was written by BFI.”

“This is not the right place for a landfill,” Bernson told the commissioners. “Dollars should not be the only incentive for making land-use decisions of this magnitude.”

But other local politicians disagreed. Assemblymen Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) and Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) both submitted letters supporting the landfill’s expansion. The extension “is environmentally sound and economically critical,” Hertzberg said.

“Landfilling isn’t a popular subject,” said Daniel Tempelis, a BFI vice president who supervises the landfill. “But at the same time, we do it well. We’re in compliance with the regulations and we intend to stay in compliance.”

Proponents said it would be less expensive to bury trash at Sunshine Canyon than to transport it out of the region. Of the seven remaining landfills in Los Angeles County, BFI officials said, three will run out of space within the next decade.

After a staff recommendation, the Planning Commission approved zoning changes from open space to heavy industrial that will permit BFI to dump about 5,000 tons of trash per day in the city section of the landfill. Of the 494 acres involved, 194 would be used for trash disposal with the rest earmarked for buffer zones, support facilities and roads.

The proposal to expand the dump now heads to the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, which is chaired by a committed foe of the project in Bernson. BFI officials expressed confidence the committee would consider the plan objectively.

The commission’s vote marked a defeat for residents who had fought the dump in its various forms for years. Opened in 1958 within city boundaries, the landfill closed in 1991 when its zone variance expired. In 1996, the county allowed BFI to open a 215-acre landfill on adjacent land within the county.

“We just wasted our time,” said Wanda Griffith, a longtime Granada Hills resident, after the vote. “It was an exercise in futility.”

Several opponents complained to commissioners that their grass-roots efforts had no hope of competing against BFI’s corporate clout.

A report released by the city’s Ethics Commission this week said BFI paid the second-highest amount--more than $302,000--to city lobbyists in 1998 for lobbying to expand the landfill.