Court rulings lighten the load in county's trash woes.

Two separate courts handed down rulings last week which could ease what local officials have called L.A. County's looming trash crisis.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge decided on Oct. 26 to allow Puente Hills Landfill, the largest landfill in the county, to continue operating past Nov. 1.

On the same day the California Court of Appeals made a ruling which could allow another large landfill, Sunshine Canyon, which has been closed since 1991, to start up again in the next four to six months.

In the Puente Hills Landfill matter, Superior Court Judge Diane Wayne made a tentative ruling that it could continue operating despite her earlier ruling that the environmental impact report, which allows operations past Nov. 1, violated the California Environmental Quality Act.

Wayne stated she was swayed by arguments made by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, a joint powers authority of 79 cities which owns the landfill, that closure of Puente Hills, situated near the intersection of the Pomona and San Gabriel Valley freeways, could cause a trash crisis and therefore a "serious health and safety hazard" in the county.

Homeowners living near the landfill brought suit against the Sanitation Districts in 1992, alleging the EIR for Puente Hills did not adequately address a number of potential environmental impacts as required by CEQA, including threats to groundwater quality and air quality.

Judge Wayne had previously found the EIR did not adequately address threats to groundwater quality. An attorney for the homeowners said he is considering whether to appeal Wayne's decision to allow Puente Hills to continue operating.

In a separate decision, the California Court of Appeals ruled that the environmental impact report for Sunshine Canyon, a landfill owned by Houston-based Browning Ferris Industries, did not violate CEQA on several grounds as was alleged by attorneys for the City of Los Angeles and a group of homeowners.

Arnie Berghoff, director of government relations for BFI, said the decision could mean that Sunshine Canyon, situated in the unincorporated area of the county near Granada Hills, could begin accepting 6,000 tons of trash a day in the next four to six months.

In 1991, the City of Los Angeles brought suit against the County of Los Angeles, which approved the Sunshine Canyon project, alleging the project's EIR was inadequate in addressing groundwater quality, air quality and several other environmental issues, under CEQA.

In its ruling, the Court of Appeals also found two of three issues in the EIR which a trial court identified in an April 1992 ruling must still be corrected -- by the county adding the issues to the EIR and holding public hearings on those two issues.

The two issues that remain are that the EIR did not include a prior history of BFI's operations and compliance with the law and that the EIR did not include an analysis of the environmental impacts of the county's decision to exclude the City of L.A. from dumping its trash into Sunshine Canyon.

The county has already included analysis of these issues in the EIR and held public hearings on those issues last summer, Berghoff noted.

"We are very, very happy with the decision," said Steven Weston, attorney for BFI. "It gives us a clear road map of what we have to do to open the landfill and we've been doing precisely that since the (trial) court ruling was initially made in April 1992."

He added, "Our opponents have been very litigious, but it seems we're seeing a light at the end of the tunnel."

The drawn-out legal and political battle over Sunshine Canyon began in 1991 when the county Board of Supervisors voted to allow BFI to develop the landfill on 200 acres of unincorporated county land near Granada Hills, which is part of the City of Los Angeles.

The City of Los Angeles sued the county, contending that the environmental impacts of the plan had not been scrutinized, and won a trial court decision which found the EIR was inadequate on six different grounds. The city and the county both appealed that decision, with the city alleging the EIR violated environmental law on several other grounds.

Those grounds include allegations that the EIR did not adequately address air quality and water quality concerns, as well as that there was not a trash crisis in L.A. County, as claimed in the EIR and that alternatives to Sunshine Canyon had not been considered, Weston said.

Meanwhile, BFI has since been adding further analysis of environmental impacts, as required by the trial court, to the EIR, Weston said. BFI is "hopeful" the Board of Supervisors will re-certify the EIR at a meeting on Nov. 18 and the trial court judge will give final approval to the project soon after that.

The county and BFI "certainly won the issues that we were appealing," said David Elson, attorney with the law firm Manatt Phelps Phillips & Kantor, which was hired by the City of Los Angeles to fight the Sunshine Canyon project.

BFI could begin operations at Sunshine shortly, Elson said. But he noted BFI stated in 1992 that it would begin operations at Sunshine Canyon shortly and were not able to do it.

Harry Stone, assistant director of the county's Department of Public Works, said the two court decisions could be good news for the county garbage problem.

If both Sunshine Canyon and Puente Hills can operate, "In the short term obviously this will help the situation," Stone said. "We do have a major planning problem of dealing with our waste."

But in the long term -- the next seven to 10 years -- the county faces the prospect of not having enough room locally to take all its waste, Stone said. He noted another three of the county's eight currently operating landfills are expected to close in the next three years.

"If Sunshine is allowed to open, that, in the long-term, will give us more capacity," Stone said. The court decision on Puente Hills "postpones a crisis from happening immediately. Certainly, if Puente Hills had shut down on Nov. 1, even the most optimistic projections were that we'd have had a major problem."

Wayne ruled to allow Puente Hills to operate while the Sanitation Districts revise the EIR so that it meets CEQA law. But under the ruling, the districts are not permitted to expand the landfill's size until the CEQA requirements are met.

In September, Wayne found the EIR which would allow Puente Hills to operate past Nov. 1 and to expand by 100 acres did not adequately address the project's potential threat to contaminate ground water.

In a ruling last week, Wayne wrote the Sanitation Districts could not start work on the expansion but could use existing landfill space to dump trash. Wayne wrote that just because she had found the threat to groundwater was not adequately addressed, it did not mean that the landfill "was presently unsafe."

Wayne wrote that she was swayed by declarations by L.A. County Supervisor Ed Edelman and a number of mayors of L.A. County cities that "continuation of the landfill is currently necessary for disposal of the current solid waste in the county."

Jeffrey Dintzer, an attorney for the residents who live near Puente Hills, had argued in court last week that there is enough space in Los Angeles County to accommodate the 11,000 to 12,000 tons currently being dumped at Puente Hills.

He said closing Puente Hills would result in inconveniences for trash haulers and more costly disposal service costs. But Dintzer said Puente Hills still should be closed down because "we have evidence there is environmental harm going on."