Too much Sunshine?

WHO SAYS THE CITY AND COUNTY can’t cooperate? The Los Angeles City Council and County Board of Supervisors have long worked hand in hand on the Sunshine Canyon Landfill, each heaping blame on the other for keeping the dump near Granada Hills alive. The landfill straddles the city limits, and when the city’s part closed for a few decades, the county’s side opened up and kept Sunshine Canyon in business.

Now they’re both open and operating. In March, the City Council voted to stop sending garbage there within five years. Take that, you county scalawags! Then, last week, the Board of Supervisors voted to merge the county’s portion with the city’s.

The dump’s neighbors, of course, are outraged. The county action makes it look as if the operator, Browning-Ferris Industries, played the board against the council to keep the landfill open. But the truth is even worse. The city never had the power, and probably no intention, to close Sunshine Canyon.

Now the county has signed on to creating a mammoth superdump that likely will require a new city-county agency to oversee it. Among the host of concessions made by BFI is that it will close -- honest to goodness, no kidding -- Sunshine Canyon in 2036. If you’re good with numbers, you’ll notice that’s 30 years from now, not five. Even if garbage picked up by city sanitation trucks is diverted elsewhere by 2011, as city leaders promise, Sunshine Canyon will continue to be open, and accepting trash into Granada Hills, for another quarter of a century.

The dump merger will go to the City Council for sign-off, and it will be interesting to watch the same officials who pontificated in March about showing BFI who’s boss explain why they’re ready to give the landfill operator a superdump.

Elected officials in both the city and the county have played fast and loose with the public on the facts about Sunshine Canyon and the need to keep dumping there. They have squabbled with each other, mostly in an effort to make it seem like they are taking decisive action to get out of the landfill business. But the landfill business will be around as long as Angelenos produce garbage that is not recycled, incinerated or turned to mulch. Any political posturing that diverts us from that fact just lengthens the time that garbage will be trucked across the city, the county and the state to fill up canyons and ravines.

The city has taken a few steps toward ramping up its recycling programs, but most action has come by order of the courts or the state. It has to do more. Whether Sunshine Canyon closes in five years or 30, the city will need landfill space until we recycle more and invest in technology to dispose of waste cleanly.