BFI DUMPS LIES ON L.A. TO EXPAND GIANT LANDFILL.

Byline: Scott Wildman 

IT appears that a full-court press to convince the public that Los Angeles needs to have the world's largest waste dump within its city limits has begun in earnest.

The patently false claims that appeared in an ad in the July 19 Daily News constitute an escalation in a campaign by Browning Ferris Industries (now known as Allied Waste Industries) that, up to this point, has consisted primarily of greasing the palms of local and state politicians with obscene amounts of cash - about a million dollars in the last three years in lobbying expenses and campaign contributions - in its efforts to profit by expanding this dangerous and unneeded waste facility.

In its ad BFI asserts, ``Sunshine Canyon is tucked away in an isolated northwest canyon of the San Fernando Valley.'' The reality is that the Sunshine Canyon Landfill is located less than a quarter-mile from Van Gogh Elementary School and the neighborhoods that make up the school community.

Even the Los Angeles Unified School District, a bureaucracy not known for its leadership on environmental safety, has opposed the expansion of the dump due to concerns over the potential health effects caused by the proximity of this landfill.

Let's also not forget that, located less than a mile from the dump, is the Metropolitan Water District's Jensen Filtration Plant - the primary source of drinking water for residents throughout the city of Los Angeles, unprotected from the waste stored uphill in this urban refuse heap.

The BFI claim that ``Sunshine Canyon ensures that our trash will always be disposed of in a safe and environmentally sound manner ...'' rings disingenuous to the families of the children affected by asthma and rare cancers who now live in the shadow of this toxic dump - a facility that has been cited repeatedly over the past several years for violations of environmental regulations put in place to protect area residents.

And finally, BFI invokes the biggest lie of all: implying that we don't have enough dumps to handle the solid waste generated in California. A recent report issued by the California state auditor, at the direction of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, debunked this myth by projecting that existing California landfills currently have the capacity to absorb waste for at least 47 more years.

This study also reported that many cities in California, including Los Angeles, have not lived up to the spirit and/or the letter of a 1989 state law that promoted recycling and discouraged landfill expansion by requiring cities to achieve a 50 percent reduction in solid waste through the implementation of aggressive recycling programs by the year 2001.

It is now 2001, and we are at a crossroads. In the early 1990s the dump was closed by court order. In the mid-1990s, county supervisors and elected city officials, over the fierce opposition of Valley residents, acquiesced to the formidable political muscle of BFI and approved an expansion that, if accomplished, would make Sunshine Canyon the largest landfill in the world.

During the last mayoral race, virtually every candidate, including our new Mayor James Hahn, courted Valley residents with their opposition to expanding this dump.

I can only hope that our current crop of elected officials have the guts to do the right thing and not succumb to either the deceptions or the financial ``incentives'' offered by the waste disposal giant: Browning Ferris Industries.