Let’s talk trash

ANYONE WHO WANTS a huge, noisy, dusty, odorous and environmentally iffy landfill as a neighbor, raise your hand. We thought so. Were the issue to come up now, the Los Angeles City Council would never assent to the creation of a gigantic trash dump next door to the Valley bedroom suburb of Granada Hills.

Unfortunately, it’s already there.

If a visionary trash-reduction plan put forward by Councilman Greig Smith (who represents Granada Hills) were 10 years into its 20-year timeline, the city wouldn’t even need to use the Sunshine Canyon facility. But the plan is in year zero, still at the idea stage.

If the city of Los Angeles had full control over Sunshine Canyon, the dump probably wouldn’t be open today. But most of the dump is in unincorporated county land, and even in the city portion, it has a 25-year operating permit. And, at least for the next few years, Los Angeles needs to keep putting its trash in Sunshine Canyon.

The City Council was scheduled to vote today on whether to renew the city’s contract with the landfill. But the issue is so controversial, and the outcome of the vote was so uncertain, that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa negotiated a six-month extension of the deadline for when the city must act on the contract. The mayor and the council should use this breathing room to plot a more realistic course.

Canceling the contract wouldn’t close the dump, which could seek contracts with other cities to take up the slack. The city could be forced to keep using the canyon, at unpredictable spot rates. (Remember spot rates for electricity in 2001?) It might also expensively ship garbage long distances on an already-overstressed rail system.

A first vote Friday on full renewal of the landfill contract got seven “yes” and four “no” votes. (The “no” votes included Smith, the one council member for whom a yes would be certain political suicide.) It needed eight votes to pass, a number that’s much harder to reach with two of the 15 City Council seats vacant, awaiting special elections. (In addition, council members Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel were not present.) The six-month extension means that all 15 council seats will be filled by the time of the next vote, which is likely to aid the pro-renewal side.

One measure that passed unanimously on Friday was an amendment to limit any renewal to five years and ban further renewals. That should be a starting point for figuring out a fiscally responsible way to eliminate the city’s need for Sunshine Canyon.

Smith’s plan provides a good framework. It would greatly increase incentives for businesses and large apartment buildings to recycle more of their waste. Currently, the city’s recycling program applies only to houses and small apartment buildings. Smith also calls for small, useful things, such as putting household food scraps in the green garden bin to be composted and using separate pickups for restaurant food waste, as San Francisco does. It would require city government to think green in its purchasing and to recycle more. In the more distant future, technologies such as superheating, but not burning, waste could drastically reduce the bulk of what’s left.

None of this can happen instantly or for free.

A delay in the final vote at least allows the city to develop detailed plans (and even consider imposing modest trash collection fees) to reduce waste without starving citywide needs such as public safety.