Homeowners and developers join forces to oppose larger landfills.

Homeowners and developers fought on opposite sides through much of the 1980s, but the two have formed a rare alliance to oppose the proposed expansion of the Puente Hills landfill.

At issue, among many other questions, is whether the proposed expansion would reduce residential and commercial property values surrounding the landfill, which occupies a little over 1,300 acres in an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County's San Gabriel Valley.

The Hacienda Heights Improvement Association and RR&C Development Co., developers of the 110-acre Crossroads Business Park, contend that the landfill expansion would reduce property values in addition to polluting the air and water and causing other problems.

The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, a joint powers authority of 79 cities that operates the landfill, says the expansion wouldn't cause any of those problems.

The latest round in the landfill dispute occurred in late December, when the homeowners and RR&C filed lawsuits attempting to block the landfill expansion by challenging the environmental impact report recently approved by the sanitation districts' board of directors. Although the homeowners and RR&C filed separate suits, RR&C attorney Marlene A. Fox said she worked closely with the homeowners in providing information from technical experts hired by RR&C to evaluate the proposed landfill expansion.

"My client opposes this proposed expansion because of the adverse environmental impacts on the (Crossroads) business park," Fox said. She said the adverse affects would include approximately 1,000 trucks a day traveling through RR&C's property en route to and from a proposed recycling center that would be part of the expansion.

Fox said RR&C has myriad concerns, ranging from the smell of the landfill to possible water pollution and exhaust fumes of the trucks.

"There has to be a negative impact because of the traffic alone," Fox said.

Nearby homeowners contend the proposed expansion has already reduced their property values. Audrey Christman, who lives near the landfill, said her $270,000 home was in escrow a year ago when the prospective buyers pulled out of the deal after learning about the proposed expansion.

"Some real estate people don't even want to take your listing if you're near the landfill, and some buyers don't even want to look here," she said.

The homeowners' lawsuit, filed by Jeffrey Dintzer of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, claims that the "environmental degradation" caused by the expansion "promises to have a continued adverse impact on residential and commercial property values in the area." The suit further states that the homeowners "have already suffered by the presence of the dump and the recent recession."

"They want to put 600 feet of trash within 1,500 feet of homes in the area," Dintzer said, explaining that the "600 feet of trash" is a reference to a six-story recycling center that would be part of the proposed expansion.

"How anybody can come to the conclusion that that's not going to have an impact is unbelievable."

But Donald Nellor, head of solid waste planning for the sanitation districts, said studies commissioned by the districts show that a properly operated landfill doesn't reduce property values. Nellor also challenged the homeowners' use of the term "dump," saying the word connotes an open dump and that open dumps are illegal.

"We use appraisers who pull sales information and compare it with sales information from comparable neighborhoods that are removed from the landfill. We have not seen any impact on property values, and we have been operating here for 30 years," Nellor said. "We don't believe that a well-operated landfill reduces property values."

The question of the Puente Hills landfill's effect on property values has arisen as part of the permit renewal process for the landfill, which is the largest in the county and currently takes about 13,000 tons a day of the county's 40,000-ton total. The landfill's permit will expire in November of this year, and the sanitation districts have proposed the expansion as part of its new permit.

The battle at Puente Hills is actually the latest in a recurring series of disputes about whether landfills in general effect property values. Through the years, both sides have commissioned studies or cited reports by experts, but the experts have reached conflicting conclusions.

During a previous Puente Hills permit approval process in 1982, for example, an outside study commissioned by the sanitation districts said the planned expansion at the time "will have no measurable impact on property values or sales activity."

But a consultant hired by Hacienda Heights Improvement Association disputed the study's conclusions and asserted that property values would be reduced by up to 19 percent.

The same questions have arisen at the City of Los Angeles' Lopez Canyon landfill in the Lakeview Terrace section of the San Fernando Valley and at the Sunshine Canyon landfill above Granada Hills, also in the San Fernando Valley.

Sunshine Canyon has been closed since its permit expired in September 1991, and its application for a new permit has been held up by a lawsuit the City of Los Angeles filed in response to residents' concerns over a proposed expansion.

But spokesman Pete Block of Houston-based Browning-Ferris Industries Inc., which operates Sunshine Canyon and is one of the country's largest waste management concerns, said a study commissioned by the company showed Sunshine Canyon did not effect nearby property values.

That study, the findings of which appeared in the April 1991 issue of The Appraisal Journal, concluded that properly operated landfills produce "no significant difference in either current prices or in appreciation rates." The study's authors, who were paid by Browning-Ferris to conduct the study, included two Cal State Northridge professors, Donald H. Bleich and G. Michael Phillips.

Despite the sanitation districts' contention that a properly operated landfill doesn't reduce property values, Nellor said the districts' board has directed the staff to study the feasibility of a "property value guarantee program" that would compensate property owners in the event a landfill reduced their property values. But Nellor said the sanitation districts, which operate four of the eight major landfills in Los Angeles County, have made no commitment to implement such a program.

"We're only now investigating how such a program might be designed," Nellor said. He noted that an Oct. 26, 1992 report commissioned by the sanitation districts and produced by John G. Wright, a Granada Hills real estate appraiser, supported the conclusions of previous reports that the Puente Hills operation doesn't reduce property values.

But homeowners' attorney Dintzer challenges the Oct. 26 report because he claims it was a review of previous studies prepared by both the sanitation districts and the homeowners, not a new study.

The sanitation district has prepared no current appraisal of the impact of the proposed project on the property owners in the surrounding area," Dintzer said.

"There is just no bona fide purchaser who is going to buy a house for the same price with a dump expansion as they would without it," he said.

Besides the homeowners' association, plaintiffs in that lawsuit challenging Puente Hills include four individual members of the association and the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, which operates schools near the site.

The suit claims the proposed expansion "will destroy views of the Puente Hills canyons, enjoyed by many Hacienda Heights residents," and that the environmental impact report is deficient in many respects. It asks the court to set aside the sanitation districts' resolution that approved the EIR.

Dintzer said his clients don't oppose dumps, per se, but they oppose Puente Hills for the specific reasons cited in the suit.

"We definitely need dumps, but the question is, where do we put them?" he said.