Dump Foes Pick Up the Pieces

From Currie’s Coffee Shop to Van Gogh Elementary School, residents of this upscale bedroom community are talking with dismay, anger and determination about the decisions of the mayor and City Council last week to allow Sunshine Canyon Landfill to expand nearby.

Tucked into a northern corner of the San Fernando Valley, Granada Hills has become ground zero for discontent with City Hall. At holiday parties, church events and over backyard fences, residents are commiserating about what many feel is a betrayal.

“I feel violated,” Jim Mims said Friday as he dropped his daughter off at the elementary school a mile from the dump. “You’ve got a dump right next to homes, to this school. What about the investment we all have in this community?”

Su Wong, who has a son in first grade at Van Gogh, worries about the health of students downwind from the huge landfill, although dump operator Browning Ferris Industries says measures will be taken to make the landfill safe.

“We’re threatened,” Wong said. “We felt very helpless going up against a private corporation.”

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted 8-7 to approve a zone change allowing Browning Ferris to expand its landfill into 194 acres in Granada Hills. Mayor Richard Riordan then signed the ordinance, which allows the dump operator to accept 55 million tons of trash on the city portion of the landfill during the next 26 years.

It’s not fair, diners at the coffee shop said: With its five freeways, water plants, police firing ranges and gas pipelines, their community is shouldering more than its share of the city’s burdens.

“The real crime is having other cities dumping here,” said Dave Dean as he sipped from a mug of coffee. “That’s what makes this so in-your-face.”

Others worry about the negative impact on property values, and the tarnishing of the area’s image.

Marti McInnis fears her beloved Granada Hills will be known as the home of the dump, rather than what she knows it is: a great place for families to raise their kids.

“Nobody wants it. It’s terrible,” McInnis said.

But despite the anger and betrayal, few residents say they are thinking of moving.

“I don’t think that is the solution,” Wong said. “We’re going to fight.”

Like Wong, Meg Volk said she and her husband plan to join what is expected to be a heated court battle to block the expansion.

Volk, a physical therapist, and her husband, an editor with the television series “Frasier,” live on Canyon Ridge Lane, just over a hill from the landfill.

She said the couple plans to write a check for $1,000 to the North Valley Coalition, which is hiring attorneys to challenge the expansion in court. “We’ve been talking about moving, selling our home, but we’d rather not. We love the area,” Volk said.

Residents said they are prepared to dig in their heels.

“What I’m hoping is we will stall it long enough for them to back off,” Mims said.

But Browning Ferris officials said they have no intention of abandoning the expansion, which they say will be environmentally sound and will provide a critical place for Los Angeles and surrounding communities to dispose of trash for the next 26 years.

Company officials say the opposition voiced by Mims, Volk and Wong is not shared by everyone in the San Fernando Valley.

They cited a poll conducted for Browning Ferris by Arnold Steinberg and Associates, who interviewed 2,000 likely voters in the city, including 675 in the Valley, between Nov. 29 and Dec. 5.

The poll found that 32% of likely Valley voters opposed the landfill expansion, 27% favored it and 41% were unsure of their position. Citywide, 34% of likely voters supported the expansion, 22% opposed it and about 45% were unsure.

Company officials acknowledged that opposition in Granada Hills would be much greater than in the Valley or the city as a whole, but said the pollster did not break out results by community.

When pollsters told likely Valley voters that it would cost the city $16 million more per year to truck the trash to distant landfills, 38% said the city should expand Sunshine Canyon, 36% said the city should not expand the dump and 26% were unsure.

Citywide, 45% supported expansion when told of the potential cost, while 26% were opposed and 29% were unsure.

“I don’t think there is a groundswell of opposition in the Valley on this issue,” said Arnie Berghoff, a Browning Ferris lobbyist.

The poll was shared with City Council members before last week’s vote to reassure them that the landfill expansion was not a make-or-break political issue, nor one likely to cause widespread outrage or boost Valley secessionists, Berghoff said.

“Some council members were concerned this was becoming an overriding issue,” said Harvey Englander, a Browning Ferris consultant.

Opponents of the landfill questioned the poll, saying Browning Ferris exaggerated the costs, which were based on city statistics on the price of trucking trash to the desert and the company’s estimate that the city would lose $8 million in franchise fees.