Sunshine Canyon Landfill

Norah Schumacher's Valley Perspective piece ("Dump Plan Threatens Area Water," July 7) rehashes the numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations concerning Sunshine Canyon Landfill that have been rejected by every local, regional, state and federal agency that has reviewed this landfill project. Suffice it to say that independent and comprehensive analyses by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, State Department of Water Resources and experts who wrote the book on landfill safety for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have all shown that the landfill liner design is safe.

Dennis Montano stood on a corner in Granada Hills one recent brisk morning, lifted his nose to the sky and sniffed. "Right now, I don't smell anything," Montano said. That was good news for the embattled Sunshine Canyon Landfill. The disposal site operates roughly a mile away in Sylmar but has roiled the Granada Hills North neighborhood with a potpourri of foul smells. In the face of numerous complaints and dozens of public nuisance violations, the company has organized an "odor patrol team" in an effort to improve community relations and comply with state regulations.

Save Open Space, an organization of L.A. and Ventura County environmental and homeowner groups, opposes the Sunshine Canyon Landfill expansion. Open Space zoning, mainly in Ventura County, and Significant Ecological Areas, in Los Angeles County, are required by state law to be part of general plans necessary for the "health and welfare" of the residents of California. Los Angeles is approaching the point where it will be all paved over with very little "open space" preserved. Sunshine Canyon has significant resources and is identified as a significant area to be preserved.

Adding another wrinkle to a decades-old controversy over a giant dump in the north San Fernando Valley, the state has approved a request by the operator of Sunshine Canyon Landfill to step in and oversee enforcement of waste laws at the facility until a city-county joint agency is approved. Sunshine Canyon is actually two landfills roughly a quarter of a mile apart, which puts them in different jurisdictions: one in the city of Los Angeles, the other in unincorporated county territory.

Foes of the Sunshine Canyon landfill won a reprieve Friday when a Los Angeles city panel invalidated a decision that homeowners had feared would help Browning-Ferris Industries, the landfill owner, to expand its dumping operations. Mary Edwards, secretary of the North Valley Coalition, a group organized to fight the Sunshine Canyon landfill above Granada Hills, called the action by the city's Board of Referred Powers a "hopeful sign." Browning-Ferris attorney Linda Bozung had no comment.

A judge has refused to order Browning-Ferris Industries to pay $350,000 to cover the legal costs of a homeowner group that sued the company to block the expansion of a landfill in Sunshine Canyon. The North Valley Coalition of homeowners sought the money under a state law that allows litigants to win legal costs if they prevail in a lawsuit that is necessary to secure important rights of interest to the general public. In a ruling late Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Ronald M.

The operator of Sunshine Canyon Landfill was given a one-month extension Wednesday to continue dumping in a southern area of the site, about one-third of a mile from homes in Granada Hills. The Los Angeles City Council, which approved the extension, previously determined that the dump's southern portion had nearly reached capacity and should be closed by Dec. 31.

Los Angeles city officials and leaders of half a dozen neighborhood groups toured the Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Sylmar on Saturday morning to discuss waste disposal problems with the operators of the dump, Browning-Ferris Industries. In the past, Browning-Ferris has quarreled with residents over the dump, one of the largest in Los Angeles County. The idea Saturday was to bring together landfill operators, San Fernando Valley residents and Los Angeles city officials for a discussion of what both sides called the city's looming waste-disposal crisis.

Re "L.A. councilman to lead six-country trip," May 30 As The Times reports, the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation proposes to use fees generated from the Sunshine Canyon Landfill to fund a $250,000 overseas fact-finding mission led by Councilman Greig Smith this summer. The decision to use these municipal funds was made entirely by the Bureau of Sanitation, not Sunshine Canyon. Although operations at Sunshine Canyon generated the funds, the landfill's operators have no control over how that money is spent by the city.

Only days after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he would leave town in June for a trip to Israel, a city councilman from the San Fernando Valley announced Thursday that he would spend an entire month looking at trash conversion facilities around the globe. Councilman Greig Smith said he and other city officials would travel to Canada, Japan, Israel, France, Germany and Spain as part of a fact-finding mission waged by the city's Bureau of Sanitation. They will also visit Bakersfield.

County supervisors voted 3 to 2 Tuesday to approve a revised permit for the Sunshine Canyon Landfill, restricting the flow of trash into the site and limiting operations to 30 years. The permit for the landfill near Granada Hills includes a prohibition on accepting trash from outside the county and on operating before 6 a.m. The landfill must also record complaints, monitor air quality and correct pollution problems.

About 20% of the city's trash will be diverted from the Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills to the El Sobrante Landfill in Riverside County near Corona, the Public Works Board decided Friday. In an effort to reduce the dumping of trash near Los Angeles residential neighborhoods, the board approved a five-year contract with Waste Management to take 600 tons of the city's nearly 3,000 tons of trash generated each day to El Sobrante. The city will pay Waste Management $4.3 million annually.

Three months after the City Council voted to spend up to $5 million annually to divert some trash from Sunshine Canyon landfill beginning today, most of the city's trash will continue to go to the Granada Hills dump for at least a while longer. The city is in negotiations with two dumps outside Los Angeles to begin receiving some trash next year.

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.

Overruling an earlier decision by regional planning commissioners, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 on Wednesday to approve a new operating permit for the controversial Sunshine Canyon Landfill while also calling for a possible end to dumping at the site after 30 years.

IN A STROKE OF POLITICAL GENIUS, the Los Angeles City Council on Friday voted to pay the operators of the Sunshine Canyon landfill several million dollars more for the privilege of sending them less of the city's garbage. Instead, the city will send it -- for more money still -- out of the county to two other dumps. This is a marvelous idea. The council can now apply this principle to other city contracts and services. The new runway at LAX, for example.