Sunshine Canyon landfill threatens communities and drinking water

Unless it goes into a recycling bin, anything and everything thrown away in Los Angeles winds up in the same place-the Sunshine Canyon landfill in the north San Fernando Valley, near Granada Hills and Sylmar. That means big business for a trash company giant and big risks to local communities and much of southern California.

The massive dump, quickly becoming one of the largest in America, is located in a seismically active area near key drinking water facilities that serve a large portion of southern California, including the L.A. and California Aqueducts and the MWD Jensen Filtration Plant.

Earthquakes, landfill collapses, and inevitable leakage from the landfill make Sunshine Canyon a major risk to the entire region. A landfill failure would be disastrous both for citizens who depend on these facilities for drinking water and for taxpayers who will bear the financial burden of the landfill's failure.

Community organizations, environmentalists, and labor representatives are working together to find a safer solution to dealing with our trash while reducing the risks posed by the continued operation of the Sunshine Canyon landfill. An upcoming vote by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will decide whether the landfill's operation in the future will be safer for residents or less expensive for the trash company that owns it.

'Now is an important time for citizens to speak out. We can win this vote and start making progress to protect our environment and our communities,' said Kim Thompson, a Sierra Club activist and Granada Hills resident.

If the landfill is allowed to operate without stringent controls and without adequate fiscal assurances, communities will be at risk and the cost of dumping trash will remain artificially low, making it harder to implement safer solutions in the future.

Mega-landfills like Sunshine Canyon seem cheap because they pile so much trash in such a small area. But the risk of leaks into the groundwater and the potential collapse of the mega-landfill have not been anticipated. BFI, the waste industry giant that owns and operates Sunshine Canyon, has insurance coverage of less than $30 million-far less than would be needed to clean up a catastrophic failure.

BFI should be required to purchase appropriate insurance to protect the interests of the region and should also be required to reserve funds to deal with any future problems until the dump no longer threatens human safety.

Illegal dumping in Sunshine Canyon began in the 1950s. In 1958 the City of Los Angeles allowed a small dump in the area. BFI acquired all of Sunshine Canyon, sitting on both the county and city land, in 1978. Because the potential impacts from the proposed 215-million-ton landfill could not be mitigated, the mega-landfill was divided in two, resulting in a county landfill on one part of the property and a city landfill in an adjacent area.

In 1999, the city approved and expanded its area of the landfill, at the same time implementing a series of protective conditions that go beyond those applied to the county area of the landfill.

Recently, BFI applied for changes to its permit for operating in the county portion of its landfill. These changes would undercut many of the city's more protective conditions, like the use of cleaner trucks, requiring a double liner for the landfill, and clear limits on the amount and life span of trash that can be dumped in the canyon.

In November 2005, the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission rejected BFI's proposed weakening of environmental and community protection. Now it's up to the Board of Supervisors, which is expected to make a decision as early as this month.