A Little Respect for Garbage

As a general rule, a politician’s stand on any landfill depends on its proximity. Is it in his or her district? Heated opposition. Close by? Polite objections. Far away? Hey, we’ve got to put our garbage somewhere.

State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) has the giant Puente Hills landfill in her district. She even used it as a prop last month in announcing the creation of the state Select Committee on Urban Landfills. But judging from the panel’s meeting last week, its first, committee Chairman Romero intends to go beyond simply trashing the landfill.

Armed with a state auditor’s report issued in December, she is asking hard questions about how the California Integrated Waste Board oversees landfills statewide. The answer, according to the audit, is not very closely: In 43 cases, operators were on average three years late in correcting violations involving explosive gas, disease-spreading rodents and open burning. Yet in 10 years, the board has assessed only one monetary penalty.

Romero’s committee backs the auditor’s recommendations, including inspecting landfills every 18 months. The panel may also seek changes in state law to give the board more say over whether additional landfill capacity is necessary and whether a proposed landfill would disproportionately affect minority neighborhoods. These proposals have merit.

Romero also promises to revisit 1989 legislation that called on cities and municipalities to reduce the amount of trash going to landfills by 50% by 2000. Californians have dramatically increased recycling since then. Los Angeles now diverts about 45% of its waste. That is slightly above the state average of 42% and well above the national rate, measured at 28% for 1999, but still short of the goal. Romero’s committee will examine how to reinvigorate recycling and waste reduction.

The debate is notoriously polarized. Operators defend their landfills as meeting health and environmental regulations, all the while spending fortunes lobbying politicians and mailing out corporate propaganda that only takes up more space in the dump. Neighbors blame landfills for cancers and other illnesses.

In this overwrought atmosphere, a focus on concrete steps and the mundane details of regulation and oversight is a refreshing change--and may actually result in solutions that have eluded the politicians who favor hot rhetoric or cold indifference.