Opposing sides talk trash over regional landfill.

Vote is near on taking L.A. garbage for next 100 years

Plans for the controversial Eagle Mountain landfill, which if built would be the largest dump on the West Coast and the first of three proposed regional waste-by-rail sites in Southern California, are scheduled for their first public vote this month.

If approved, one-third of the Los Angeles County's refuse could be carried 200 miles away by train and truck to Eagle Mountain, 60 miles northeast of Indio in Riverside County. The landfill would be 2.5 miles long, 1 mile wide and 2,000 feet deep. As proposed, the regional landfill would have enough capacity to serve Southern California's solid waste disposal needs for the next 100 years.

After nine months of hearings, at which hundreds of residents have testified, the Riverside County Planning Commission is set to vote on the project June 10 or June 17. Final approval rests with the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, which is not expected to vote on the matter until late September.

The project is being proposed by Mine Reclamation Corp., a company that was set up in 1982 specifically to build this project. It is 50-percent owned by Houston-based Browning Ferris Industries, the second-largest waste hauler in the nation, said Rick Daniels, president and chief executive officer of Mine Reclamation. The other half of the company is owned by a combination of mostly private investors, Daniels said.

The specter of a train carrying Los Angeles' garbage and dumping it in the largest-ever landfill in the Western U.S. has stirred up much resistance in Riverside County, government officials there say. Riverside County residents have expressed concerns about the potential air pollution and groundwater contamination the landfill could create.

The Eagle Mountain project, which would use Southern Pacific Railroad's intercontinental rail line, is "further along" than either of the two other regional landfill projects being proposed by waste and railroad companies, said Steve Maguin, head of solid waste management for the Los Angeles Sanitation District, a coalition of 79 Los Angeles County cities. If approved, Eagle Mountain is scheduled to be operational by the first quarter of 1994.

Among the other regional waste-by-rail projects is a proposal by Gardena-based Western Waste Industries to use Southern Pacific lines to haul garbage to a 500-million ton capacity landfill in Imperial County.

Another plan, advanced by Oak Brook, Ill.-based Waste Management, would carry refuse via Santa Fe Railway from Los Angeles County to a landfill with the capacity to hold 360 million tons in eastern San Bernardino County.

The Eagle Mountain would hold 700 million tons of waste.

If Eagle Mountain is approved quickly, Mine Reclamation Corp. "certainly would have a major advantage" in getting an agreement from the L.A. county Sanitation District to tote 4,000 tons of municipal garbage a day, Maguin said.

Maguin has testified in Riverside public hearings, saying L.A. County is "very interested" in the enormous capacity Eagle Mountain could provide for its trash. The county is running out of places to put its refuse and could have more garbage than space to dump it by 1993, he said.

The decision will be "crucially important," said Riverside County Supervisor Corky Larson, who represents the desert district in which Eagle Mountain is located.

"I think Southern California is going to go to regional landfills," Larson said. "Whoever sites the first one will set the standard for what is expected environmentally. It's going to affect all the regional landfills."

The major benefit to Riverside County, which had to fire more than 100 employees because of a budget deficit last year, is a projected annual fee of $30 million a year, Larson said. Under the plan, the county would get from $4 to $6 of the $40-a-ton tipping fee for Eagle Mountain.

"It's easy to say, 'Hell no, we won't take your garbage,'" he said. "But we're looking at a $50 million shortfall next year."

Eagle Mountain is such a hot issue that the Riverside County Board of Supervisors vowed not to vote on it until the end of September, since many county residents will be out of town in the summer months, Larson said.

Mine Reclamation Corp. has an agreement with Rancho Cucamonga-based Kaiser Steel Resources Inc., the former owner of the Eagle Mountain mine, Daniels said. Mine Reclamation will pay an undisclosed percentage of fees to the steel company as part of a 99-year lease deal between the two companies, which is contingent on the project getting government approval, Daniels said.

The project is expected to create 1,100 jobs and have a total economic impact to the private and public sectors through job creation, new county revenues, and revenues to businesses serving Eagle Mountain, of $2.2 billion over the next 20 years, according to a study done by New York-based accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick.

In the past decade, the trend in U.S. waste management has been to build huge regional landfills farther and farther away from major metropolitan areas, Daniels said. Environmentally, he contends, it is much better to build landfills away from major populations.

But Denise Dobrensky, president of FIT Environment, one of a number of Riverside area groups which oppose the dump, said she has proof the landfill would contaminate the local water supply, and she will reveal the information at the planning commission meeting this week.

Daniels countered: "I've got Ph.D. engineers and seismologists and environmental scientists who have staked their professional credentials that that is not the case."

Dobrensky said the water issue is the most serious of many concerns residents have about the project. If it passes, it means that "for the next 100 years, L.A.'s trash will be transported to the Coachella Valley," Dobrensky said. "I believe once that happens, we are in trouble."

Supervisor Larson said many fears of leakage and contamination reflect "alarmist and inaccurate information" put out by resident groups that oppose the project. But the water issue is the one that could kill the project, said Larson, who said she is still undecided about the landfill.

As part of the development agreement, the board will only approve the project if environmental experts agree that there will be no possibility of contamination, Larson said.

Under terms of the development agreement, for every ton of trash dumped into Eagle Mountain, $1 of the $40-a-ton fee will be set aside for preservation of open space and desert, Larson said.

In addition, Kaiser Steel has agreed to grant several hundred acres of land to preserve the desert tortoise, an endangered species, Larson said.

The staff report by the county planners -- which will make a recommendation on the project to the board of supervisors -- will be made public June 10, said Ron Goldman, principal planner for Riverside County.

Incorporated in the staff report will be testimony of "hundreds of people who have testified," Goldman said.

Concerns have arisen over questions about air quality, water quality, traffic, odor and what would happen if a train derails. A number of residents have expressed resentment that Los Angeles County would ship its garbage to Riverside, Goldman said. Several have demanded that Eagle Mountain go to a countywide vote, he said.

Larson concluded: "Right now (Eagle Mountain is) a great big hole. Look at this hole. There's no vegetation. It's a manmade botch already. I don't think people in Los Angeles need to have a guilt complex that they're trashing the desert."