HAHN WEIGHS LANDFILL OPTIONS FOR CITY, VALLEY INDUSTRY PROPOSALS AMONG SEVERAL BEING CONSIDERED.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Industry proposals for moving garbage dumps to remote locations offer Mayor James Hahn few options to get rid of landfills in the San Fernando Valley anytime soon.

Hahn is expected today to endorse the recommendations of his Landfill Oversight Committee, which call for economic incentives to landfill alternatives, pursuing new technologies and decentralizing the trash burden currently borne by only a few communities.

``We're tackling this from a number of fronts - alternative technologies, alternative waste sites and looking at diverting more waste from landfills,'' Deputy Mayor Brian Williams said, repeating a campaign promise by Hahn that the city will stop shipping trash to Sunshine Canyon Landfill by 2006.

In response to the city's request for proposals, Browning Ferris Industries - operator of Sunshine Canyon Landfill, which is close to expanding its dump into Granada Hills from county land - submitted a plan that would allow it to accept the city's trash through 2009 while $30 million in rail lines are being built to haul garbage to remote dumps in La Paz and Copper Mountain, Ariz.

BFI District Manager Greg Loughnane said it makes sense to use the capacity at Sunshine Canyon rather than shipping the trash elsewhere.

``In our opinion, truck transfer to any site in the local five-county areas merely dumps city of Los Angeles waste into other landfills that also have nearby communities,'' he said.

But Enrique Zaldivar, assistant director of the city Bureau of Sanitation, said the city asked specifically for a plan to get city trash out of Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

Waste Management Inc., which operates Bradley Landfill, submitted a joint proposal with BLT Enterprise, which runs the Central Los Angeles Transfer and Recycling Station.

The two companies proposed using existing transfer stations in South Los Angeles and Carson, plus building a transfer station at Bradley Landfill, before trucking it to landfills in Simi Valley, the Antelope Valley and Riverside.

The plan also said the city would not have to build a transfer station on the Westside, a proposal that has met stiff community resistance.

The cost would be about $42 per ton, more than the city pays now for transfer stations and disposal. The city pays $23 per ton now to ship waste directly to Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

``First off (the proposal) provides exactly what the mayor said his policy is, which is to dispose the waste outside of the city of Los Angeles,'' said Bob Coyle, Waste Management director of public sector services. ``It provides the city with a transfer station network that they don't have to develop on their own.''

But Sun Valley activists said the proposal stinks.

First it assumes a transfer station would be built at Bradley, despite strong community opposition. Plus the proposal would continue to bring diesel-spewing trash trucks into the same neighborhood and spare the Westside and wealthier communities trash facilities.

``We're trying to undo that kind of mentality,'' said Ellen Mackey, a member of the East Valley Coalition who sat on the mayor's landfill oversight committee.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com