County supervisors give final OK to Puente Hills Landfill expansion.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last week unanimously approved a 10-year operating extension and a 100-acre expansion of the Puente Hills Landfill, the county's largest garbage dump.

Officials of the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, a joint powers authority of 79 L.A. County cities which owns the landfill, had warned that the county would have no place to put its trash if the project was not approved.

The Puente Hills site, at the intersection of the San Gabriel River and Pomona freeways, currently takes 12,000 tons of garbage a day - about one-third of the county's trash. The landfill's current operating permit is due to expire in November.

Marlene A. Fox, attorney for the Roski family, who own Crossroads Business Park, a $100 million commercial real estate project adjacent to the landfill, said she will file a lawsuit challenging the board's decision in the next two months.

The Roskis and a group of homeowners are already suing the Sanitation Districts, alleging that the environmental impact report for the project does not meet state environment standards.

Fox said she is considering suing the county Board of Supervisors on a number of grounds, including the fact that the county granted a permit to the districts to build a project, when the Roskis own 18 acres of the 100-acre planned expansion.

It is unconstitutional for the supervisors to give "a public agency a land use entitlement on private property," Fox contended. "They've got the cart before the horse."

A county attorney has already advised county officials that they could grant a conditional use permit even though the Sanitation Districts do not own a portion of the land where they plan the expansion.

Robert Manuele, vice president of the Hacienda Heights Improvement Association, a homeowners group which opposes the expansion and is suing the Sanitation Districts, said his group may also sue the Board of Supervisors.

Manuele expressed dismay over the board's decision. But he said, "We didn't expect to win until we got to court."

Donald Nellor, the districts' head of planning for solid waste management, said the board's approval was the most significant political hurdle in the approval process. The project still needs approval from the California State Integrated Waste Management Board and the California Regional Water Quality Board, Nellor said.

Theresa Dodge, engineer on the project, said if the project is not ultimately approved, county residents and business owners will spend an estimated $200 million to $400 million more annually on waste hauling. The Puente Hills Landfill charges $16 a ton to dump garbage there, compared to about $30 a ton at the county's other privately owned landfills, Dodge said.

Manuele said even though hundreds of homeowners who attended public meetings on the expansion failed to get county officials to block the expansion, they won a number of concessions.

The expansion project approved by the board on July 6 is about half of what the Sanitation Districts originally proposed.

In its original plan, the districts wanted to expand on 260 acres of new land, but were cut back to about 100 acres of new land, said Dodge.

The districts asked to extend their operating permit for 20 years, but the county regional planning commission cut that down to 10 years. The districts appealed the planning commission's recommendation that the operating permit be extended for only 10 years, but the board declined to extend it to 20 years.

Originally, Sanitation Districts staff had proposed that garbage be placed within 1,000 feet of homes and a junior high school. County officials forced the Districts to move the landfill back to 2,000 feet away from homes and the school.