DESERT DUMP WILL BE CLEARED ILLEGAL LAKE L.A. SITE HOLDS OVER 300 TONS OF JUNK, TRASH.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LAKE LOS ANGELES - More than 300 tons of old junk and trash will be hauled out of a pit scooped out of the desert decades ago, starting next week.

The old appliances, construction debris, tires and other trash date back at least 30 years and probably much longer, and most likely came from area residents, officials say.

``It was the place where you took your trash before there were established landfills,'' said Chris Mastro, a Los Angeles County environmental health official.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services will clear out the illegal dump site with $100,000 in funding from the California Integrated Waste Management Board.

The dump site is about six miles east of Lake Los Angeles, just inside the county line between Black Butte and El Mirage Dry Lake.

Guinn Construction will use bulldozers to move the trash, with help from inmate crews from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The cleanup is expected to take about five days.

The workers will take special precautions because some of the trash contains asbestos. Some of the material is ash, which can contain toxic metals.

The ash came either from fires that occurred in the trash pile or is the result of the formerly accepted practice of burning household trash at homes, Mastro said.

This is the 12th Antelope Valley site to be cleaned by the county health department using almost $600,000 provided under state legislation for cleaning up illegal dumps. The desert trash is a grating irritation for valley residents who don't like to see Joshua trees surrounded by junk.

Mastro estimates he has been involved in about 50 cleanups around the Antelope Valley since 1998, of which four others have been major ones like this.

``Without the state board this site wouldn't have been done,'' he said.

Charles F. Bostwick, [phone]

chuck.bostwick(at)dailynews.com