Will mine pit save Elsmere?
Even though the planned Eagle Mountain landfill in Riverside County was approved last week, that could make it one of the nation’s largest garbage dumps, Los Angeles County officials say it has no bearing on the proposed Elsmere Canyon Landfill in Santa Clarita.
“Our thinking about Elsmere is that if it’s environmentally sound, we should go ahead with it,” said Joe Haworth, an environmental engineer and spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts.
“If there is a reduced number of large in-county landfills, you’ve got to pay their price,” Haworth said. “We’re trying to keep the in-basin/out-ofbasin flexibility.”
But local activists opposed to the proposed Elsmere Canyon landfill believe that if Eagle Mountain receives its expected final approvals from state and water authorities, there no longer will be a need for the local dump site. The Riverside County Board of Supervisors this week gave its blessing to the Eagle Mountain plan.
“Landfills generate revenue and the county does not want to give up the revenue source,” said Marsha McLean, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Canyons Preservation Committee.
The county and Torrance-based BKK Corp., which would develop the Elsmere dump for the county, have exaggerated the trash problem, McLean said.
“For the past four years, the county and BKK have been saying there will be garbage in the streets. They, of course, want a landfill close in to control the profits,”. McLean said.
She said BKK has sunk several million dollars into developing Elsmere and stands to make $125 million over and above the cost of the project if it is approved.
BKK Corp. President Ken Kazarian said that Elsmere alone will not answer Los Angeles County’s trash problem.
“People are trying to make this an Elsmere versus Eagle Mountain argument, but we’ve never been involved in that. There’s need and room for both,” Kazarian said.
Haworth said the county now operates eight landfills — although the permits expire on the Puente Hills dump in 1993 and its renewal is uncertain. If Eagle Mountain receives its final approvals, it can accept 20,000 tons of trash per day for the next 100 years and can begin receiving trash as early as 1994.
The landfill site is an abandoned steel mine and would receive trash by rail haul, he said. It is one of four proposals being considered for distant landfill options.
Currently, he said, the county produces about 47,000 tons of trash per day that is sent to local landfills. But those landfill sites have closure dates or depend on additional permits to continue operating, he said.
And those uncertainties force the county to continually explore alternatives to existing sites, Haworth said. Depending on out-of-county landfill sites will put the county in a vulnerable position, he said.
“We’re convinced that if we have no choice but these out-of-basin projects, the price for the use of those landfills will go up.”
Local Sierra Club President Karen Pearson believes the county’s real vulnerability will come when it has no space left to develop a landfill.
“Once all the urban sites are used up, then they will really be in danger of being held hostage. They should be in no hurry at all,” Pearson said.
Given the Eagle Mountain landfill option, Santa Clarita Mayor Jill Klajic said the Elsmere Canyon alternative should be scrapped.
“There is no need for Elsmere and they are going to be very hardpressed to make their case that this beautiful canyon so close to thousands of people should be a landfill,” Klajic said.
BKK Corp. has proposed turning Elsmere Canyon into a 190 millionton capacity, or 16,000 ton-per-day, landfill in the canyon, east of Highway 14 near the end of San Fernando Road.
Environmental studies, required by the state and federal government to be used in the decision-making process on the fate of the canyon, are currently being conducted. The land sits in the Angeles National Forest and BKK hopes to negotiate a land swap of 1,600 acres of forest land for use in the 2,300-acre landfill site.