HEALTH RISKS AT LANDFILL IGNORED; FEUER, RESIDENTS SAY SITE UNDER-STUDIED.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

Despite evidence that expanding Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Granada Hills will contribute significantly to regional air pollution, the impact on nearby neighborhoods has received only limited study, according to environmental documents and interviews.

Consultants, in response to Los Angeles Unified School District concerns earlier this year, did a computer model of possible migrations of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter from the landfill to Van Gogh Elementary School, and said they found no significant levels of either. The school is located about a mile from the 17-million ton capacity landfill, which is being proposed for expansion to 90 million tons.

Council member Mike Feuer, who has focused his concern on diesel garbage trucks and their potentially carcinogenic fumes, said last week the incomplete attention to alternatives is unacceptable in the context of the environmental and health concerns raised by residents who, over 25 years, would see the landfill inch to within about a quarter-mile of homes.

``I don't think the city can satisfactorily answer the concern of the citizens until it conducts an extensive, good faith study on the alternatives,'' Feuer said. ``We're not close to having that kind of full information.''

Despite those concerns, City Council supporters of expansion have focused almost entirely on the cost benefits to the city, not potential health risks to residents. Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton has estimated it would cost up to $9 million more a year to haul away the city's trash, though no bids have been sought.

Still, City Planning Department officials who rely on environmental studies paid for by the landfill's operator, Browning Ferris Industries, said they are concerned enough about ``potentially significant'' pollution to require air monitoring both at the landfill's boundary and at the school, if the council approves expansion on Dec. 8 as expected.

``Our analysis doesn't show local impacts, but we're concerned,'' said Planning Department hearing examiner R. Nicolas Brown.

``Our goal is to minimize the impacts of the project. That's why we're going to continue to test it. This is an uncertain area.''

The bulk of the 2-1/2 tons of pollutants generated daily by the proposed expanded landfill operations - more than five times the South Coast Air Quality Management District's significant threshold - would blow out of neighborhoods and into the regional basin before the chemicals could form dangerous compounds like ozone, said Shari Beth Libicki, a principal in Environ, an Emeryville consulting firm.

Call for more testing

Neighbors, however, say more independent testing needs to be done, citing years of experience with dust storms and blowing trash they blame on BFI's previous operation of a smaller site, allegations the operator denies. Otherwise, they say the proposed expansion of the landfill from 215 acres to 451-acres may result in unanticipated pollution drifting into their back yards.

``From reading the environmental impact report, it sounds like this is a stainless steel bowl that nothing would ever fly out of,'' said North Valley Coalition member Mary Edwards, an opponent to reopening the city side of the dump, which has been closed since 1991.

``But you're talking to someone who lived through the dust storms of the 1980s. Whatever was in that landfill got in our houses.''

More diesel trucks

Feuer is among those who have raised concerns about risks associated with increasing the diesel truck traffic to the landfill from 598 permitted trash trucks to about 1,150 trash trucks per day under the proposal, which would allow 11,000 tons of garbage to be hauled daily.

Environmental documents show that about one ton of pollutants per day would be generated by the diesel trucks using the landfill.

Libicki said most of those pollutants would be dispersed into the region. Proponents of the landfill say trucking the trash further away would only add to pollution in the Los Angeles Basin.

Diesel pollution in the basin has been identified with an elevated cancer risk.

A recent AQMD comprehensive regional study concluded that mobile truck and car pollution sources contribute to the risk of an additional 1,400 cancers per million people in the Los Angeles region, with about 70 percent ascribed to diesel particulate emissions.

The trash delivery trucks, most of which are diesel, are anticipated to produce regionally each day about 954 pounds of carbon monoxide, a compound that can cause tissue oxygen deprivation; 875 pounds of nitrogen oxides, which can act as an acute respiratory irritant; 151 pounds of reactive organic gases, which interact with other chemicals to form pollutants like ozone; and 67 pounds of PM10, or tiny particles no more than 0.0004 of an inch across.

The diesel PM10 is of specific concern because it consists of hundreds of kinds of carbon compounds with carcinogenic properties similar to those in cigarettes, or associated with other combustible processes, said George Alexeeff, deputy director for scientific affairs for the California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

``A lot of the risk has to do with how much (particulate matter) is produced. With diesel, a large amount is produced,'' Alexeeff said.

The California Air Resources Board and the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment in June 1998 said that 30 human epidemiological studies have found a ``causal relationship between occupational diesel exhaust exposure and lung cancer.''

BFI spokesman Arnie Berghoff said there are other sources of diesel pollution that are more significant to the community and its children than emissions from trash trucks going to and from the landfill.

``If we're going to talk about diesel and children, we should concentrate as much, if not more, on school buses,'' he said.

Edwards said the community is concerned the studies have not fully addressed the additive impacts from all diesel sources in the area, including the landfill's operations, on residents and schoolchildren.

``Did they figure in the four freeways that all come together here?'' Edwards said. ``The kids already are exposed to so many particulates in this area. There already is a lot of asthma and respiratory problems. This is a community that is sick.''

Libicki said particulate levels from all sources in the community range from 40 to 90 units, compared to a health threshold of about 150 units established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She said the landfill would not contribute ``significantly'' to those levels.

The council is urging a gradual conversion of BFI and city trucks, as well as other diesel heavy equipment, to vehicles that burn cleaner fuel. However, the conversion is dependent on a finding by a Technical Advisory Committee that the switch-over becomes technologically - and economically - feasible.

Cost estimates to switch the city's fleet of 600 trash trucks alone could run to $30 million, depending on the system chosen, according to city fleet services estimates. A limited pilot program is under way.

Landfill pollution

Trucks, however, are not the only - nor even the major - source of pollution associated with the landfill, environmental records show.

The landfill is expected to produce over one ton of pollutants a day, resulting from the burning off of gas that builds up as the trash decomposes. Heavy equipment used on site to spread and compact the trash would add nearly another half ton of pollutants daily, the environmental record shows.

James Aidukas, BFI's environmental consultant, said the three flares operating at the site burn more than 99 percent of the gases produced by the landfill.

BFI officials said the flares are state-of-the-art, and that without them there would be ``random'' uncontrolled emissions from the landfill.

``We can greatly reduce emissions with the flares,'' said James Ambroso, BFI's general manager at the landfill.

Emission concerns

Los Angeles Unified School District environmental officials earlier this year raised concerns that the pollutants from the expanded landfill operations might reach the school after environmental documents identified the project as a significant contributor to the region's air pollution.

``They have a problem with onsite operations and it's significant,'' Bill Piazza, with LAUSD's Environmental Health and Safety Branch, said.

Environmental documents on file with the city say expansion would add significantly to air pollution.

``Operations would result in exceedances of the carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, reactive organic gases and particulate matter criteria and would remain significant after the incorporation of mitigation measures,'' the document states.

Betsy Lindsay, whose firm, Ultrasystems Invironmental Inc. in Irvine, prepared most of the environmental report said, ``Any large regional project will definitely have an impact.''

But, she added, ``We're in an air basin that's polluted to begin with. Any big regional project, even incremental increases, will be over the existing thresholds.''

LAUSD's specific concerns, however, led Environ consultants to look at nitrogen oxides and particulates that might migrate from the site. The modeling took into account local wind patterns, including the gusts generated out of the the Newhall Pass, BFI officials said.

In an April memo to the city, Libicki concluded, ``The carcinogenic impacts from diesel particulate at the Van Gogh Elementary School drop below the SCAQMD's level of concern.''

Further, she wrote in an Oct. 12 letter, it would be impossible to evaluate whether an increase in diesel particulate resulted from the expansion of the landfill.''

Libicki said consultants did not test for carbon monoxide, reactive organic gases or sulfur dioxide migrations of`f the site because they are not associated with local pollution.

Aidukas said BFI has agreed with the city's requirement to monitor around the perimeter of the landfill and at the school.

Laura Casas Frier, who lives about two miles from the landfill said the city needs to do more to ensure North Valley residents are protected.

``How far do I have to be away from these trucks for it to have health implications?'' Frier, a homemaker with three children, asked. ``It's the carcinogenic factor, but I'm even more worried about other health implications and respiratory problems.

``The council just talks about cost. I want to talk about health.''

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Photo: Trucks line up at the Sunshine Canyon landfill where 598 trucks are allowed to dump their loads daily; that number may go up to 1,150.

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer