GREEN FUTURE PLOTTED FOR FORMER DUMP HELP SOUGHT IN PARK PLAN.

Byline: DANA BARTHOLOMEW

Staff Writer

LAKE VIEW TERRACE -- For decades, neighbors shut their windows to the hideous smell, dust and noise from the Lopez Canyon Landfill.

Now city officials are asking community members to help plan a park on the former 400-acre dump.

"This is a very exciting day for the Lake View Terrace and Pacoima area," City Councilman Richard Alarcon said during a Thursday news conference atop a former mountain of trash.

"In the next couple of years, we can turn certain segments of the landfill into a park that can benefit the community."

Today, he will introduce a motion before his council colleagues calling for the city Bureau of Sanitation to design a park and recreation area for the landfill.

He has also revived a local committee to help plan the park and determine ways to spend nearly $1 million in landfill energy proceeds. Another $200,000 generated by methane gas energy sales will be spent on the community at large, Alarcon said.

The Lake View Terrace and Pacoima Community Advisory Committee, first formed after the dump closed in 1996, once helped steer $5 million in landfill compensation funds for a Lake View Terrace Library and other services.

"This landfill, although a blight to the community to begin with, has now become a marvelous asset," said Phyllis Hines of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Association, who has lived 1 1/2-miles from the dump for 33 years. "I'm thrilled for what's happening here."

The northeast San Fernando Valley was once home to 35 landfills. Last month, the city announced plans to create a 41-acre recreational park at the former Sheldon-Arleta landfill in Sun Valley.

Alarcon, a former councilman and state senator recently re-elected to the Northeast Valley district, has called closing of the Lopez Canyon Landfill his proudest achievement.

"It's going to take 30 years for this landfill to settle completely and to be restored into something more productive," he said, flanked by a dozen community members. "But I don't think it's too early for us to begin the process of restoration."

The proposed park would be built in stages over the next three decades as 19 million tons of trash settles between Lopez and Kagel canyons.

Initial plans call for a 5-acre pocket park north of Van Nuys Boulevard and Fenton Avenue -- an area now studded with sycamores, pines and oaks -- during the next two years.

Horse and hiking trails can then be designed for 235 acres not used to dump trash, with panoramic views of the Valley.

City officials said the park would be financed by methane gas proceeds used to restore the dump.

"Just think about when it's all beautified," said Cile Borman, president of the Foothill Trails District Neighborhood Council, who once helped form a human chain to protest the landfill.

"It's like finding a treasure and retaining it for its glory. Just think -- you get birds up here. And quiet."

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Map:

Phase I of proposed Lopez Canyon park