WASTE MANAGEMENT POLLUTES ON L.A.'S DIME.

Byline: Cynthia Despres and Ellen Mackey Local View

CONGRATULATIONS, Los Angeles. You are assisting Waste Management Inc., one of the largest and most lucrative waste managers in the world, as it expands profits on your dime.

It turns out that W.M.'s Bradley Landfill in Sun Valley extracts about 50,000 gallons of leachate per week, tests it for chemicals, then drives to the nearest sewer connection and pumps the leachate - untreated - into our sewer lines that go to the Donald C. Tillman or Hyperion reclamation plants, and thus into the Los Angeles River and the Pacific Ocean.

And everyone is OK with this?

Leachate comes from water percolating through landfills; it may contain undesirable or toxic chemicals. Modern sanitary landfills are constructed to collect and treat leachate before it is released to the environment. A quick Google search indicates that, indeed, most decent landfills at least neutralize leachate before sending it off to be treated by the local citizenry. Not here.

When a senior geologist from the Landfill Unit of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board was questioned in a recent community advisory committee meeting about the fate of the leachate, he stated flatly that WM was operating within its permit.

What? How did that happen? Who allowed that to happen?

A 1988 Texas A&M University study revealed that ``there is ample evidence that the municipal waste landfill leachate contains toxic chemicals in sufficient concentration to be potentially as harmful as leachate from industrial waste landfills.'' The Texas study shows that even though municipal landfills may not legally receive ``hazardous'' wastes, the leachate they produce can be as dangerous as the leachate from hazardous waste landfills.

Doctors Kirk Brown and K.C. Donnely at Texas A&M examined data on the composition of leachate from 58 landfills. The data they reviewed showed 113 different toxic chemicals in leachate from municipal landfills and only 72 in leachate from hazardous-waste landfills.

Additionally, a breakdown of the chemical contents found that in both industrial and municipal landfill leachate, 32 chemicals cause cancer. In industrial landfill leachate, 10 chemicals cause birth defects, compared with 13 in municipal landfill leachate. And in industrial landfill leachate, 21 chemicals cause genetic damage, compared with the 22 genetic damage-causing chemicals found in municipal landfill leachate.

There's also evidence that landfill leachate from our local landfills contain radioactive elements. According to a 2003 study, Bradley Landfill's leachate contained tritium at 20,100 picocuries per liter over the drinking- water limit - that's 1,000 times the normal background level.

What effect is all this leachate and the chemicals it contains having on the sewer lines, the treatment plant and the effluent that is released into the Los Angeles River and then the ocean?

So the question we should be asking is: Why are we subsidizing profits for W.M. while paying to harm ourselves? We suggest that Los Angeles ratepayers stop subsidizing W.M. Personally, we're not interested in donating to W.M. We think the company's ability to dump leachate into our sewer lines should be withdrawn.

The environmental impact report for the proposed expansion of the Bradley Landfill is due to be released any time now. We will be interested in the water quality section that discusses this topic.