Landfill Capacity: A Problem We Can’t Just Sweep Away : Recycling is not enough to stem a surging tide of waste

What would happen in Los Angeles County if every potential or actual landfill neighbor actually got one of his favorite wishes: no new dumps, and no expansions for existing dumps between now and the year 2010?

Well, according to statistics from the county’s Department of Public Works, the results would be disastrous.

It is difficult to quantify the county’s enormous waste generation rate, but we’ll try. Last year, it was 50,129 tons per day, six days a week. By the year 2010, that amount is expected to increase by more than 21%.

By state law, by the year 2000 the county will be required to divert away from landfills at least half of all of that waste. But that alone will not solve the regional waste problem.

With no new or expanded landfills, the county says, its excess landfill disposal capacity would evaporate by the end of 1998. So said the county’s “time to crisis” analysis that was released earlier this year.

By 1999, the county says, its landfill disposal capacity would be exceeded by more than 27,700 tons of waste, per week, every week. By 2010, the figure would reach more than 150,000 tons of waste per week.

One could argue that the county’s projections are wildly inflated, but these numbers are simply too large to ignore, even after factoring in smaller increases in the county’s waste projection. The basic facts will remain.

We’re left with the fact that the supposedly tough state law requiring a 50% reduction in the amount of waste going to landfills by 2000 is inadequate.

The percentage will have to be raised, perhaps even well beyond the city of Los Angeles’ own goal of 62% waste diversion by the year 2000. Even then, it’s probably true that new landfills (and/or expanded use of existing sites) will be required. It seems unavoidable.

It doesn’t help that state officials have found that the county’s second largest landfill, Puente Hills, has for years been leaking a chemical soup of multiple volatile organic compounds into ground water.

It doesn’t help that San Bernardino voters in March essentially rejected Los Angeles County’s plans to send trash by train to the High Desert.

So, it wasn’t very surprising that county trash disposal officials, in March, made a highly unpopular suggestion: transforming Elsmere Canyon into a 190-million-ton dump ought to remain an option for the long-term. Other possibilities for new landfills include Blind Canyon, Mission/Rustic-Sullivan canyons and Towsley Canyon. But there are potential problems with site access to both Blind Canyon and Towsley Canyon.

Additionally, some Los Angeles officials, such as City Councilman Richard Alarcon, say that there is no need for Sunshine Canyon Landfill or Elsmere Canyon. Alarcon says that the city must “reduce, reuse, recycle” and end its reliance on “obsolete urban landfills.”

Well, Los Angeles city and the many other local governments within Los Angeles County will have to create, and soon, the kind of realistic plan that could point in that direction. Right now, such a plan simply doesn’t exist.

Until then, those huge landfills will still be a much-hated necessity, and some locality will have to accept one as a neighbor.