High Desert Grows Tired of Being All-Purpose Dump

The wide-open spaces in the Antelope Valley that have drawn thousands in search of affordable homes along with off-road motorcycling enthusiasts looking for a challenge have also attracted dumpers seeking to dispose of all manner of things unwanted.

For years, dumpers of hazardous waste, trash, dead bodies and more have come to the 5,000 square miles of mostly unpopulated desert that begin to unfold an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles. But as the population of the area has grown, so too has residents’ displeasure over the continued use of the often beautiful high desert as an all-purpose disposal site.

When Antelope Valley residents learned last week that the city of Los Angeles was quietly proposing to spread up to 300 tons a day of sewage sludge onto area farm fields as fertilizer, it seemed to many to be just another example of the area getting dumped on.

“That is the typical mentality about the high desert. People think, ‘Nobody lives here. It doesn’t matter,’ ” said Lancaster Mayor Lynn Harrison. “They’re always quick to get rid of what they don’t want here, whether it’s toxics or a prison, or sludge.”

Four of five farmers who were to receive the city sludge backed out, and the proposal now appears to be on hold.

The desert is already cluttered with piles of construction rubble, discarded couches and washing machines, and waste from businesses unwilling to pay to dump their leftovers in landfills, city and county officials said.

One of the worst blights on the desert is a cluster of about three dozen old industrial sites in parts of Rosamond and south of Mojave, just inside the Kern County border. For years, metal smelters and other industries that operated there left behind accumulated hazardous waste in huge open piles.

The practice went on virtually unregulated until 1986, when state authorities discovered that children in the small community of Rosamond, just west of Edwards Air Force Base, were contracting cancer at five times the normal rate.

Despite four years of investigation, state health officials still have not identified the cause of the cancers. But about two-thirds of the 37 industrial sites still have pollution problems awaiting clean-up.

Last week, as state health officials looked on, workers in protective gear applied a polymer coating on the ground near one site, the United Metal Recovery plant near Mojave, to prevent cancer-causing heavy metals and dioxins there from being spread by winds and rain.

Not all dumping cases are of that magnitude, however. A 71-year-old operator of a North Hollywood metal polishing business faces arraignment this week on two felony charges for allegedly dumping as many as 140 barrels of hazardous waste between 1985 and 1989 in remote areas east of Palmdale.

Naaman Washington, owner of Washington Metal Polishing, is accused of dropping the 55-gallon drums of polishing wastes and other debris generated by his small shop along the roadside as he drove to a ranch near Palmdale.

When Deputy Dist. Atty. William Carter, who is prosecuting Washington, toured the area near Avenue T and 126th Street East, about eight miles east of Palmdale’s city limits, he found it had become a popular spot for other dumpers.

“There was a lot of junk dumped out there: construction material, drywall, chairs, boards, appliances, Sheetrock, old cars. It was a mess,” Carter said.

The barrels and other debris are still there, five months after they were discovered, because county health officials say they do not have money to have them removed. Washington claims he did not dump there, even if others did. “That’s what Washington said, ‘Everyone dumps out there,’ ” Carter noted.

The case is the only one from the Lancaster-Palmdale area that Carter can recall that has been prosecuted by the district attorney’s environmental unit during the past five years. But that doesn’t mean that other illegal dumping has not occurred, he said.

Carter said the environmental office often hears reports from waste haulers about remote canyons and old mines that are apparently used for illegal, indiscriminate dumping. He said, however, that authorities have never been able to find those areas.

Even government agencies have been accused of contributing to the problem. The Antelope Valley Union High School District is being sued by an angry property owner who claims a heap of about 2,500 worn-out tires was moved last fall from a proposed school site in Littlerock to her adjacent property.

The district, which claims it wasn’t responsible for the tires, ultimately hired a contractor to haul them away. But the property owner claims the workers left a mess after removing the 5- to 6-foot-high pile, and is seeking damages from the district.

In another case, the Palmdale Water District was accused of depositing a pile of construction debris in an open field within the Palmdale city limits.

And then there are the dead bodies. Sometimes decomposing or partially eaten by animals, they routinely are discovered abandoned around the Antelope Valley. Sheriff’s deputies say most appear to be murder victims, but sometimes they cannot tell.

Since January, 1989, deputies have found at least 11 bodies in areas of the Antelope Valley. Some of the victims lived elsewhere and were dumped there, others lived nearby, authorities said. And some remain unidentified because by the time they were found, little or no useful evidence remained.

“It’s a good place to go and dump something you don’t want found,” said Lt. Frank Merriman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau. “It seems like a lot of bodies are dumped up there. It’s remote,” he said.