THERE'S NO NEED TO FOUL DESERT PARK WITH DUMP.

Byline: Seth Shteir Local View

EVER wonder where your leftover sausage and eggs end up after you put them in the garbage? How about the plastic Ziplock bag that contained your cheese sandwich? If the Sanitation District of Los Angeles and Kaiser Ventures have their way, your refuse would travel 200 miles by train to be deposited next to a pristine national park.

If you think this sounds preposterous, you're not alone. Yet this is precisely what will occur if the Eagle Mountain Landfill moves forward.

The Sanitation District of Los Angeles County first approved the construction of a waste-by-rail system in 1992 in response to the county's burgeoning trash-disposal problem. Under the plan, solid waste from Los Angeles County would be shipped 200 miles via rail to two megadumps in the California desert.

The Mesquite Landfill in Imperial County is scheduled to receive solid waste by 2010. The Eagle Mountain Landfill, which is surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park, has been halted after U.S. District Judge Robert Timlin overturned the federal land exchange necessary for the dump. The National Parks Conservation Association and other plaintiffs are optimistic that this ruling will hold up under appeal, and that Kaiser's deal with the SDLAC will fall apart.

There is no question whether the storage of immense amounts of garbage adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park would despoil the pristine desert environment. The garbage would attract large numbers of predatory and scavenging species, disrupting the fragile desert ecosystem. Exotic plants and animals would be introduced to the virgin canyons and hillsides resulting in stress on native flora and fauna. Threatened species like the desert tortoise and the bighorn sheep would suffer.

However, the Eagle Mountain Landfill isn't only a poorly conceived project because it would despoil a national park. It simply isn't needed.

According to the SDLAC's own projections, the creation of the Mesquite Landfill should provide adequate disposal capacity beyond 2018, assuming the county continues a 50 percent diversion rate for solid waste. A diversion rate is the amount of solid waste diverted from a landfill through source reduction or recycling. Moreover, with increased diversion rates, Los Angeles County would have sufficient disposal space for decades to come.

Increasing Los Angeles County's diversion rate isn't merely California dreaming. A review of diversion rates by cities and counties in California and elsewhere in the United States demonstrates that it is already possible.

For example, the city of Los Angeles had a diversion rate of over 60 percent in 2001 and has a goal to reach 70 percent by 2020. To the north, the city and county of San Francisco have a diversion rate of 67 percent, and the Board of Supervisors recently passed a referendum to achieve a 75 percent diversion rate by 2010 with a goal of zero waste by 2020. Santa Barbara County currently has a solid waste diversion rate of 59 percent. Toronto and Seattle have goals to achieve diversion rates of 60 percent by the end of the decade.

The creation of the Eagle Mountain Landfill is a myopic solution to our solid waste disposal problems. It would result in the despoiling of Joshua Tree National Park, while avoiding the difficult question of how to manage solid waste in a sustainable manner. Moreover, the creation of the new Mesquite Landfill and increased diversion rates would negate the need for large landfills like Eagle Mountain for decades. Los Angeles County residents should pressure government and industry to invest in source reduction and increased diversion rates as a means of solving Los Angeles' burgeoning solid waste problem.