L.A. Wins Reprieve From State Order to Curb Use of Dump

Los Angeles city officials on Monday won a temporary court reprieve from a state order that would have led to the closing, within days, of Lopez Canyon Landfill, dumping ground for two-thirds of the city’s trash.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dzintra I. Janavs ruled that city residents would suffer “great and serious harm” if city officials obeyed the order, received Friday from the California Waste Management Board, to cut back daily dumping and limit the area where trash can be buried.

Deputy City Atty. Christopher M. Westoff said Monday’s reprieve “means that the status quo is still in effect. The people of Los Angeles will still have a place for their trash.”

The temporary restraining order is the first major break for the city since the state began its drive in June to restrict dumping and enforce limits in a 1977 operating permit for Lopez Canyon. Last month, Janavs refused to grant a city request to invalidate the limits, and on Friday the state ordered the city to honor the limits or face fines of $1,000 a day.

The issue, however, is far from settled, and Los Angeles’ escalating garbage crisis is headed for further court arguments. Monday’s temporary order expires Aug. 24, when the city will fight for a preliminary injunction against the state mandate.

The state contends that Los Angeles is violating the conditions of its 1977 dump operating permit, which allows 400 trash trucks daily and limits the height that trash piles can reach to 1,725 feet. It confined the mounds to 140 of the site’s 392 acres.

But the city has been hauling far more trash to the site for the past six years. More than 600 trucks a day have been dumping trash that reaches up to 1,740 feet over a wider area. The city maintains that the increases were allowed under a 1983 report it submitted to the state amending their permit. About 4,000 tons a day of trash are buried at Lopez Canyon.

Court documents filed by the city Monday described a near-emergency state of garbage dumping.

City Sanitation Director Delwin A. Biagi, stated that the city would have “just a few days of disposal” capacity left if the state orders were to take effect. “Only a few months” of space is available within the allowable acreage.

“There is little or no money in the budget to pay for other landfills,” Biagi stated in the documents, adding that it would cost the city $100,000 a day to send the trash to other landfills.

Rerouting of trash would cause a “ripple effect” throughout the region because many landfills in Los Angeles County are also reaching capacity, he added.

“The city and the general public would suffer immediate and irreparable injury, loss and damage,” if the state mandate were to take effect, Biagi stated.

Deputy City Atty. Westoff argued that the state orders are not valid because they were issued by executive staff and not by a vote of the nine-member board, a point that Janavs said may have merit.

State solid waste officials said that they will continue to fight the city over Lopez Canyon.

“We have the right and responsibility to enforce state landfill laws,” said Chris Peck, state board spokesman. “We will be back.”

The state touched off the crisis in Lopez Canyon earlier this summer when the Waste Management Board told Los Angeles County, charged with enforcing the state’s landfill laws at Lopez, to force the city to comply with the 1977 permit. County officials, worried that the city would then want to use the county’s own dwindling landfill space, refused.

The city in early July went to court to try to get the 1977 permit invalidated. That case is pending.

Lake View Terrace homeowners, who have long complained to the state and the city about dump odors, traffic, dust and blowing trash, were disappointed by Monday’s turn of events.

“The city is just buying time. They are not into leadership but crisis management . . . a battle of machismo between the city and state,” said Lewis Snow, a leader with the Lake View Terrace Homeowners Assn. “In the two months that they have fought this tooth and nail, they could have come up with a reasonable plan to operate within the limits.”

Deputy Atty. Gen. David A. Eissler said that while the city may win in the short run, “the bottom line is where are they going to dump their trash in the long run?”