EDITORIAL GOOD NEIGHBOR SANTA CLARITA VOTES AGAINST SENDING ITS TRASH TO THE VALLEY.

KUDOS to the Santa Clarita City Council for doing the work that the Los Angeles City Council has long neglected: protecting people from having a dump in their back yard.

On Monday, Santa Clarita officials accepted a new, 10-year contract with the city's existing garbage haulers, Santa Clarita/Blue Barrel Disposal and Atlas Consolidated. In so doing, it rejected an offer from Browning Ferris Industries that would have sent the city's trash to Sunshine Canyon, the landfill it operates in Granada Hills, which Los Angeles has given a green light to expand massively.

BFI had presented Santa Clarita with a sweet deal: a 20 percent rate cut and a promise to turn over land it owns in neighboring Elsmere Canyon, thereby ensuring that the property would never be used as a dump.

Santa Clarita's City Council rejected the offer for a number of reasons, chief among them being a high level of public satisfaction with the service that Blue Barrel Disposal and Atlas have provided over the years.

But whatever the motivation, its decision was also an act of neighborly kindness. The council could have turned the San Fernando Valley into its very own dump for the next 10 years, but it didn't.

If only we could say the same for the Los Angeles City Council - the body that's actually supposed to be looking out for the Valley.

A year ago, the L.A. council faced a decision similar to Santa Clarita's. Instead of choosing to cart the city's trash out to the desert, where it would have harmed nobody, the council opted to sully the Valley by expanding Sunshine Canyon.

Let's be grateful that the Valley's neighbors are more considerate than its elected officials.