200 Dump Foes Rally to Save Canyon

More than 200 Sierra Club members and other nature lovers gathered in Placerita Canyon State Park on Saturday to launch a campaign to oppose the proposed development of a huge public trash dump in Elsmere Canyon.

The participants hiked through the park and canyon before settling down to write letters to the U.S. Forest Service and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, urging officials to terminate a joint agreement between the city and county of Los Angeles to develop a dump in the canyon, just outside the city of Santa Clarita.

Organizers of the “Save the Canyon Day,” some of whom came from as far away as Whittier, also told the gathering that a proposed off-road vehicle park in nearby Whitney Canyon would further threaten the beauty of the area.

“Open land is under siege. There are lots of housing developments going up in this area, and now they’re talking about a garbage dump,” said Joyce Coleman, conservation head of the Sierra Club. “We need to talk about intense recycling to reduce the waste stream so that we can not place so much reliance on landfills.”

Mike Searles, another Sierra Club leader, added, “How can all this beautiful nature be preserved with all the noise and pollution that dirt bikes will bring?”

Santa Clarita Mayor Carl Boyer expressed some disappointment with the turnout, which had been projected to be twice as large.

“It’s sad that there aren’t more local people here,” he said. “It distresses me no end. It’s a surprise to me.”

He added: “When you talk to people about what their biggest problems are, the first thing they’ll say is traffic. But their deep-seated fears concern the disappearance of Elsmere.”

The Elsmere plan calls for the Los Angeles Solid Waste Authority to open a 190-million-ton landfill in 1995 in the canyon. Most of the site is U.S. Forest Service land, and the project would require an exchange of federal holdings for private lands in Angeles National Forest.

City and county officials said the new dump is essential to solving the local trash crisis.

Officials are in the process of conducting environmental studies on the proposed dump site. In November, three environmental groups filed suit to void portions of the joint agreement. The Los Angeles Superior Court suit contends that the pact violates the California Environmental Quality Act and that state laws require more recycling and less landfill dumping.

The dump plan has outraged the Santa Clarita City Council, which has voted unanimously to oppose it. Critics contend that the landfill would pollute Santa Clarita air and underground water supplies, as well as lead to traffic jams.

One Sierra Club member, Mona Niederer, said she had never been to the canyon before, and marveled at its beauty during a six-mile hike earlier in the day.

“It’s so untouched and special,” she said as she finished a letter to the Board of Supervisors. “Recycling really should be taken more seriously if it would save someplace like this.”