Panel to Address Landfill Problems

State Sen. Gloria Romero said it’s about time politicians talked trash in California.

In the shadow of the nation’s largest garbage dump, the Puente Hills Landfill, Romero announced Tuesday the creation of the state Senate Select Committee on Urban Landfills to address shortcomings in California’s regulatory oversight. It also will investigate the inability of municipalities to meet recycling goals.

“California’s ability to fully protect the environment and public safety through the oversight of almost 200 landfills is diminished,” said Romero, chairwoman of the committee.

The committee was created in response to a state auditor’s report, issued in December, which found that the body overseeing landfills, the California Integrated Waste Board, lacks some of the necessary authority to do the job. The audit said the board extends the life of landfills with histories of violations, inadequately monitors landfills and has levied a fine on only a single facility in the last decade.

“I am especially concerned at the audit findings because these landfills are built and operated in the same neighborhoods that our children go to school, our families worship and our business centers and homes,” said Romero, whose 24th District includes Puente Hills.

That landfill’s operating permit expires in 2003. Its operator, the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, has applied to extend its life by a decade. “That’s the equivalent of a 60-story building of trash over a decade,’ she said. “Can California afford to build mountains of trash in our communities?”

The panel will hold a hearing Aug. 24 at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles, with a second hearing in September in Hacienda Heights, a community neighboring Puente Hills, where many residents favor the dump’s closure.

Opponents of the expansion of Sunshine Canyon Landfill into Granada Hills welcomed the chance to provide input to state legislators about how they believe the dump afflicts their community with dust and odors.

State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), whose district includes the closed Lopez Canyon Landfill, said the new panel needs to ensure the health and safety of those living near landfills.

“These communities that are heavily impacted by these landfills need to receive respect,” said Alarcon, who also will serve on the bipartisan panel

Romero said she is concerned that auditors found the waste board lacks the power under law to object to a landfill’s expansion, even when the board believes the additional capacity isn’t needed. It also cannot consider issues of environmental justice, such as whether a dump affects poor or minority residents more than other communities.

The level of monitoring by the state is unacceptable, she said. State auditors found the board did not monitor each of 176 landfills every 18 months as required by law. Instead, since 1995 the board has been from one month to four years late in performing mandatory inspections in 132 landfills.

Waste board officials say they already have addressed many of the audit’s findings. Julie Nauman, the board’s deputy director of planning and enforcement, said that since 1999, more than 95% of landfills have been inspected within the 18 months required.

The board, she said, is taking action to address environmental justice and capacity when considering a landfill permit. But state law must be changed, she said, before the board could use those topics as grounds for denying a permit.

Nonetheless, Romero and Alarcon said the new committee will hold hearings on greater oversight, creating recycling strategies and drafting laws to tackle so-called e-waste--such as discarded computers, cell phones and other electronic devices.

The length of a garbage truck line outside Puente Hills, Romero said, reflects a failure by cities and counties to meet a goal set in 1989 law to cut the amount of trash going to landfills by half by 2000.

Los Angeles County is estimated to be dumping about 45% less trash than a decade ago, according to sanitation district officials.