Wildman Hosts Forum on Landfill Plan

Opening a new front in the battle over Sunshine Canyon Landfill, Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles) and other lawmakers vowed Friday to investigate the health and environmental impacts of the dump’s expansion.

The Los Angeles City Council voted last month to allow Browning-Ferris Industries, the landfill’s owner, to widen operations onto 194 acres in Granada Hills. But Wildman, who is running for a state Senate seat, questioned the landfill’s safety and called Friday for a meeting of politicians, environmental regulators and residents to discuss the matter.

“The bottom line for me is I have five kids and seven grandkids,” Wildman told the audience at Van Gogh Elementary School, many of them residents who fiercely oppose the dump. “Health and safety is a No. 1 priority of mine.”

The round-table session was packed with officials from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state Department of Health Services and other agencies.

The meeting was intended to be a private “fact-finding” inquiry, a Wildman aide said, but public interest ran so high that lawmakers opened the doors to about 150 residents.

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) and Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels--all running for office this year--also attended. So did state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), and Los Angeles Board of Education member Julie Korenstein, fresh off her vote earlier this week to kill the environmentally-hobbled Belmont Learning Complex.

“Sometimes local officials do not make the right decisions,” Korenstein said. “And when the health and safety of children is at stake, I think it’s important for the state to get involved.”

BFI officials have repeatedly defended the safety of the landfill expansion, saying the facility is an environmentally-sound solution to the city’s garbage disposal needs. The company spent more than $450,000 lobbying the City Council to expand the landfill.

At Friday’s meeting, BFI attorney Steven Weston said that the dump expansion has already been approved by Los Angeles city officials and will be reviewed again in court. The North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens sued the city this month, seeking to overturn the expansion. Opponents believe the dump will create problems for neighbors, citing the stench of garbage, potential ground water contamination and windblown trash.

“We have a local land-use decision that is final, that is now being tested in the courts,” Weston said. In a Jan. 27 letter to Wildman, Weston questioned his authority to “investigate a local land-use decision.”

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Wildman, who chairs a joint Senate-Assembly audit committee that spent more than two years investigating the Belmont scandal, bristled at the challenge.

“I can tell you that this is no way to develop a collaborative and cooperative relationship,” he chided BFI officials.

Much of the meeting was consumed by a dry recitation of each agency’s regulatory authority. Some residents tired early of bureaucratic talk about “discharge elimination systems” and “fugitive dust”--so much so that one elderly man stood up, denounced all the “yapping” and stormed out.

But Wildman stressed repeatedly that his purpose was not to take public testimony but to “figure out what the regulatory structure is and figure out who’s in charge.” After listening to two hours of confusing explanations-- one official estimated that at least 30 federal, state, county, and city agencies oversee parts of the landfill--Wildman said he was convinced more study was needed.

Residents said they welcomed the state’s interest. Several complained that they, too, were frustrated at the tangled web of regulatory agencies.

“It’s been miserable. Everybody you would call would say, ‘That’s not my job, ma’am,” said Mary Ellen Crosby. “Now it looks like there will be one person or one organization we can go to. I think it’s wonderful that the state is getting involved.”