LANDFILL SITE TO LOSE 932 OAK TREES.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Browning Ferris Industries will cut down 745 mature oaks and 187 young oaks and replace them with 1,755 new oaks when it expands Sunshine Canyon Landfill into Granada Hills, officials said Tuesday.

BFI will plant as many of the trees as possible in the 100-acre hillside buffer between the dump and adjacent neighborhoods. Councilman Greig Smith will ask the Board of Public Works today for discretion in planting the remaining trees around the site.

The final count is well over the initial 510 trees listed on BFI's original oak tree removal permit application, but fewer than the 940 mature oaks a BFI consultant discovered during a recent recount. The discrepancy prompted the city to order an independent analysis.

City rules require a company to replace a mature oak with two trees.

BFI Project Manager Dave Edwards said the company will play it safe by sticking with an estimated 940 mature oaks on the property. The company is asking for credit for 125 trees it donated to the city.

An independent consultant spent several days last week climbing the steep canyons laden with poison oak and snakes, counting and measuring the trees.

Tick-bitten and scratched from tagging along, Wayde Hunter, president of the North Valley Coalition and a member of the city's citizen advisory committee at the landfill, said the neighbors have always been opposed to the sacrifice of habitat for the landfill expansion.

``All along, we've had this concern that we're losing thousands of trees in county and city and the mitigation isn't enough,'' Hunter said. ``Everything we have cut down, it will take 75 years before they come back to the cleansing power of these trees.''

The oak permit is one of the last approvals needed before BFI breaks ground on its 55 million-ton dump on the 494-acre site.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com