City Reverses Stance on Scope of Landfill Crisis

The city of Los Angeles, which painted a frightening picture of a looming garbage disposal crisis last year to justify expansion of its own municipal dump, is arguing that the situation is not nearly so dire in its lawsuit against the expansion of Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

During court proceedings, which began in October and continued this week, the city’s attorney has repeatedly attacked the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for approving the 200-acre expansion of Sunshine Canyon in February, 1991. David Elson, a private attorney representing the city, said the supervisors were misled by out-of-date information that indicated the county would run out of landfill space by the end of the year.

Although he stopped short of denying that there is a crisis altogether, he said a survey conducted by the county a month before the board approved the Sunshine Canyon expansion onto unincorporated land indicates it is at least five years away.

“The justification for wiping out an oak forest to accommodate a landfill on the county’s portion . . . because of the immediate 1991 crisis, turns out to be faulty,� Elson told Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sohigian.

Yet the attorney for Sunshine Canyon owner Browning-Ferris Industries pointed out that the Los Angeles City Council approved a 50-acre expansion of its landfill, Lopez Canyon, a month earlier based on the same specter of an immediate crisis.

“A party ought not to be able to take advantage of litigation to argue out of both sides of its mouth,� said BFI attorney Steve Weston.

The city filed a lawsuit against the county at the urging of city residents who live near the northern San Fernando Valley landfill in Granada Hills. The landfill straddles the city-county boundary, but the City Council has denied BFI’s attempts to expand within city limits.

How close the county is to running out of space for its garbage is far from the only dispute in the complicated trial, which is expected to end this month, but it has become central to many of the city’s arguments. It is an issue that has elicited glares and intense questioning from Sohigian, the judge.

“Is it just the difference between the system breaking down next month or the month after?� he asked Elson one day last week. “Either way we’re talking about a grave situation, right?�

Environmental documents provided to supervisors by BFI supporting the expansion of Sunshine Canyon were riddled with references to a 1988 countywide garbage survey, which predicted that all landfills would be full by the end of 1991. But since then, the city has filed documents with the court showing that the county Department of Public Works conducted a survey of dumps in January, 1991, and predicted that the crisis point was at least five years away.

Elson said the 1991 survey, conducted by the county Department of Public Works at the state’s behest, suggested that earlier predictions had underestimated the impact of recycling and the recession--which helped reduce the waste stream by nearly 10% between 1990 and 1991.

The challenges to the city’s arguments on the crisis issue are disheartening for members of the North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens, on whose behalf the lawsuit was filed, said the group’s secretary, Mary Edwards.

“We’d rather be represented without conflict. . . . We think this is an important point,� Edwards said. “But you really cannot find justice in the purest sense in our society because you cannot afford to bring this to court on your own.�

When told of the city’s legal stance, residents of Lake View Terrace neighborhoods near the Lopez Canyon Landfill said they felt betrayed because the city had used the doomsday predictions to justify expansion of that dump.

“They said the whole thing was going to be coming to a head in a year or two, that was why it was necessary to expand,� said Phyllis Hines, an officer with the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. “When they want to expand it again, I’m sure they’ll be using that same crisis-situation cry.�

Elson, however, argued that the city was not privy to the updated county survey when it argued for a larger Lopez Canyon and that, regardless of the actual crisis date, the city needed to protect its access to its own landfill.

“The fact is Lopez Canyon, the only city landfill, was running out of space and more space was needed,� he said.

Elson maintains that the crisis atmosphere under which the Sunshine Canyon expansion was approved had a chilling effect on evaluation of alternatives such as new landfills proposed for the more remote Elsmere, Towsley or Blind canyons. It also may have prevented supervisors from giving adequate weight to a scaled-down expansion of Sunshine Canyon suggested by a group of local residents and environmentalists, he said.

The county Sanitation Districts, an intergovernmental trash disposal agency which prepared the 1988 garbage report considered by supervisors, agreed that the volume of garbage has dropped. Last month, the agency amended its doomsday predictions, though only to 1993--instead of the latest 1996 prediction issued by the Public Works Department.

“Common sense tells you, if you look around what’s going on in our economic environment right now, you would have a significant decrease in the waste that’s being produced by the commercial/industrial market and by the housing industry,� said John Gulledge, a County Sanitation Districts assistant department head. “But that economic climate could change quickly.�

Weston argued in court, and Gulledge agreed, that a two-year or even a five-year window does not unmake a crisis, because it takes years to build and expand landfills.

The looming crisis clearly influenced the supervisors’ vote last February, with Ed Edelman, who represents some of the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods nearest the dump, saying the urgent need for more landfill space outweighed his usual concern for the environment.

But even if the court case is successful in bringing the landfill’s expansion back to the Board of Supervisors, it seemed unlikely to change the ultimate decision. Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose district includes Sunshine Canyon, was the sole vote against the expansion.