City Gets 6 More Months to Decide on Landfill Pact

Outmaneuvering opponents of a controversial dump, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday persuaded the operators of Sunshine Canyon landfill to give the city six more months to decide whether to extend its contract.

The extra time could allow the mayor to assemble the eight votes needed for the City Council to approve a five-year extension.

Villaraigosa wants to keep using the dump because the city has no immediate alternatives to the San Fernando Valley landfill. Without the contract, the city could end up taking its trash to the landfill and paying higher fees -- at a cost of at least $17 million more a year.

In a statement, Villaraigosa said he was still committed to an eventual end to dumping in Sunshine Canyon. But he urged the council “to consider reliable and financially responsible options.”

Over the last six weeks, the council has repeatedly deadlocked on the issue, with not enough votes to extend the contract and not enough votes to kill it. It takes eight votes to do either.

The council was expected to vote again today.

One reason for the impasse has been that the council currently has just 13 members because it has two vacancies. And in the past weeks, several members have missed meetings.

With the six-month delay in the deadline, the city has a shot at passing the landfill extension later this year when all 13 members are expected to be present at a meeting, or after November, when newly elected members could join the council.

Opponents of the dump were disheartened by the mayor’s last-minute move. On Friday, they had celebrated what proved to be a short-lived victory when the council fell one vote short of extending the city’s Sunshine Canyon contract.

Councilman Greig Smith, who has led efforts to push for alternatives to the dump, was exasperated.

“Why keep putting it off?” asked the councilman, whose Granada Hills district includes part of the landfill. “We should roll up our sleeves and get working on ways to get out of landfilling.”

Wayde Hunter, president of the North Valley Coalition, which is pressing the city to stop using the dump, said he was frustrated with Villaraigosa’s behind-the-scenes intervention.

“I’m disappointed in the mayor,” he said. “They didn’t call the North Valley Coalition and let us know what was happening.”

Greg Loughnane, the district manager for dump operator Browning-Ferris Industries, said Villaraigosa requested the extension Monday and the company agreed to move the deadline to Feb. 28 “because it’s the mayor.”

Loughnane said he was confident that the council would eventually agree to extend the contract, which expires at the end of June, until July 1, 2011.

Supporters of the contract extension argue that the city has no viable alternative for the approximately 3,600 tons of trash that Los Angeles sends to the dump every day. Other area landfills have limits on how much more trash they can accept.

They also note that the dump would continue to accept trash from other sources, even if Los Angeles decided to stop using it.

Smith has proposed that the city turn to recycling and waste-to-energy plants, predicting they could eliminate 90% of the waste.

Even with such efforts, the sanitation bureau argues that the city would have to continue to use landfills for several years at least.

At least five members of the council -- Smith, Wendy Greuel, Janice Hahn, Alex Padilla and Jan Perry -- have tried to block the extension, arguing that it was time to stop sending trash to an urban landfill.

And neighbors of the dump, which began operating in the 1950s, have long pressed the city to abandon it, arguing that it is bad for their health and the environment.

“We are disappointed,” said Mary Edwards of the North Valley Coalition. “You get something you think is a victory, and they then say we will vote on it again later until we get what we want.”

Edwards said it appears Villaraigosa negotiated the extension to save face politically.

Villaraigosa had lobbied the council to extend the contract, so the prospect that the council would not approve it was seen at City Hall as his first major council defeat.

“He could have avoided weighing in so heavily,” she said.