Supreme Court Ruling Could Temporarily Shut Dump

The state Supreme Court has let stand a lower court decision that would temporarily halt dumping at a controversial San Gabriel Valley landfill that sits atop a fragile water supply.

The court’s decision may mean that operations at one of Los Angeles County’s 10 major landfills would cease until court-ordered environmental reviews are undertaken.

Environmentalists and local water officials, who have long tried to close the Azusa Land Reclamation Co. dump because they believe it threatens the water supply that serves more than 1 million San Gabriel Valley residents, praised the decision.

The environmentalists and water officials originally had sued the landfill and the State Water Resources Control Board for allowing a 20-year expansion of the dump to begin in 1989.

“I think we finally won,” said Linn E. Magoffin, chairman of the Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster, which oversees water rights in the area.

The Environmental Defense Fund’s Thomas J. Graff, one of the attorneys fighting the expansion, said, “Hopefully, this will be the end.”

By refusing to hear the case, the Supreme Court let stand a a decision made earlier this month by the state Court of Appeal, which ruled that state and regional authorities should have required environmental studies before approving the expansion.

Officials of the landfill, owned by Browning-Ferris Industries, said Thursday it was too early to comment on their next step. But landfill experts said that even temporary closure would create a domino effect in Los Angeles County, which daily struggles with where to dump 50,000 tons of trash.

The Azusa landfill, a 302-acre quarrying site near the Foothill and San Gabriel River freeways, accounts for one-tenth of that amount. “That’s 5,000 tons and it’s going to have to hit the bricks some place,” said Azusa landfill manager Paul Schelstrate.

The legal dispute attracted widespread interest, partly because the San Gabriel Basin already faces one of the worst water pollution problems in the West due to industrial solvents and degreasing agents. The dump denies any responsibility for the pollution.

The case pitted such giants as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and its general manager, Carl Boronkay--who strongly opposed the landfill expansion--against the nation’s second-largest waste hauler, Browning-Ferris, and its chairman, William D. Ruckelshaus, twice director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Ruckelshaus repeatedly has given his assurances that his company has taken elaborate steps to prevent the landfill from harming the ground water.