BFI PETITIONS TO DROP LINER REQUIREMENT LANDFILL OPERATOR OBJECTS TO TWO CLAUSES IN ITS PERMIT.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Sunshine Canyon Landfill operators are fighting an order to install a costly double-liner system at the new dump, asking state water regulators to overturn the one bright spot opponents saw in the approval of the expansion.

Browning Ferris Industries also wants the state water board to remove a so-called reopener clause that allows regulators to revise or revoke the landfill's water permit based on the findings of an ongoing health study in the neighborhood.

Those two permit conditions are based on community concerns rather than sound science, according to the appeal the company filed Monday.

City Councilman Greig Smith and Granada Hills activists criticized the appeal, saying BFI would rather sue than install the tough protections.

``I can't believe they're appealing something they won,'' said Kim Thompson with the North Valley Coalition, which has appealed to water regulators to overturn their approval of a water permit.

And officials with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board said the double-liner and reopener clause were warranted, based on testimony and evidence presented by the community and political leaders.

``We needed to balance the concerns of the residents with the needs of the region to have a place for waste disposal,'' Susan Cloke who chairs the board said Thursday. ``And that balance came in providing the most protection we could for local residents and still allow waste disposal.''

Yet the appeal was not unexpected.

In December, local water regulators granted BFI the last major permit it needed to expand the dump into Granada Hills. The company wants to build a 55 million-ton dump adjacent to the existing landfill in unincorporated Los Angeles County, creating a single 90 million ton dump.

The water board had pondered the controversial project over five months, wrestling with community cancer and health concerns, water contamination threats and earthquake stability.

Finally the board approved the new landfill with two major conditions - the company would have to lay a double liner beneath the trash and the water board could revisit the permit after the county completes a health survey analyzing illness rates in the neighborhood closest to the dump.

County health officials are now finishing the questions and protocol for the door-to-door health survey and training the public health students who will conduct the survey starting in February.

Granada Hills residents long pleaded for a double-liner system to prevent seepage into groundwater. Municipal landfills are typically lined with a single 60 mm sheet of hard plastic over two feet of clay. The double-liner required at Sunshine Canyon has two separate sheets of plastic and two separate layers of clay - a system normally required only at hazardous waste dumps.

BFI attorneys said the double-liner would add at least $23 million to the project cost, delay the landfill expansion a year and cut into the space for dumping trash.

``What the records show is that the decision was based on nothing more than the sense that if one liner is good, two must be better - a classic example of a decision that is arbitrary and capricious,'' BFI attorneys wrote in the appeal.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com