More garbage time

IT’S TIME TO TALK TRASH, face reality and renew the city’s lease with the operators of the Sunshine Canyon landfill in the north San Fernando Valley.

This stinks. Los Angeles is far behind where it should be in recycling its garbage; its use of trash-to-energy programs and other new technologies, for example, is low, and it should be closer to getting out of landfills altogether. And the people of the north Valley, while certainly not caught off-guard by a dump that has operated in their part of town for several decades, have been promised by a succession of elected officials over the years that the city would get out of Sunshine Canyon this year. In August, when the contract with landfill operator BFI was supposed to be either dumped or renewed, and it looked like the city had no alternative but to sign on for another five years, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wrangled a six-month extension in an effort to keep his own campaign promise to get the city out of the dump.

So here we are. The council now has until Tuesday to act. What did those extra six months get us? A lot of posturing. We’re right back in the same position: renew the dump contract with BFI for another five years or find ourselves with 3,600 tons of trash a day with nowhere to put it. Without a contract, there’s a good chance the city would end up taking it to Sunshine Canyon and having to pay higher spot-market rates just to get past the gate.

One of the City Council’s “solutions” last summer was to promise that this five-year contract would be the last. No more contact renewals with Sunshine Canyon after 2011. Big deal. The City Council that’s here in five years can simply pass its own resolution overriding that bit of political gamesmanship.

We’re not stuck with landfills forever. Councilman Greig Smith has come up with a great set of plans for reducing the amount of garbage we send to landfills. But it just won council approval last week. It’s not far enough along to get us out of Sunshine.

Spurred by state mandates, the Bureau of Sanitation also has pilot programs and plans for trash alternatives. Some restaurants are separating table scraps for composting, and some apartment dwellers can now (finally) get their recyclables picked up. But these programs are years from going citywide. Meanwhile, improvements in home recycling have received little fanfare. (You can now toss wire hangers and plastic grocery bags in your blue recycle bins, by the way, but the city hasn’t publicized that too much.)

Renewing the Sunshine Canyon contract now is the right thing to do, although it makes it possible to ignore our growing garbage problem. Until, of course, 2010, when a new cast of politicians discovers that we haven’t yet done enough to get out of landfills.

That would really stink. For our own good, we have to keep talking trash.