County Gives Final OK to Landfill Expansion

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors granted final approval Tuesday to the expansion of Chiquita Canyon landfill, a decision that was immediately greeted with pledges to sue to stop the project.

The 5-0 vote ends more than six years of debate over the trash dump, situated outside the low income Val Verde community.

The issue split the residents into two competing groups: those who favored the dump in exchange for cash and other concessions from the landfill operator, and a second group that opposed the landfill because of health and environmental concerns.

While the board in February approved most of the plans to expand the dump, it ordered the landfill’s operator--Laidlaw Waste Systems Inc.--to negotiate a deal with the Val Verde Civic Assn. over selection of members to the Community Benefits Fund Committee. That committee will determine how to spend up to $280,000 from Laidlaw in annual payments to the community.

The original agreement precluded anyone not listed on voter-registration rolls from taking part in the decision-making. That raised concerns among many in Val Verde, which has a high population of recently arrived immigrants.

But an agreement reached before Tuesday’s meeting changed the requirement by also permitting those with California driver’s licenses or California identification cards to vote for members of the Community Benefits Fund in a special election that has yet to be scheduled.

Even with that concession, however, opponents of the dump vowed to stop the expansion.

“We’re going to sue them. Period. End of story,” said Allan Cameron, co-chairman of LASER, a group that backs alternatives to landfills.

The Washington-based environmental group Clean Water Action and a group of Latino residents who use the acronym LACH, for Lucha Ambiental de la Communidad Hispana, or Environmental Struggle for the Hispanic Community, also said they would file lawsuits.

But Ruth Griffin, president of the Val Verde Civic Assn., which has been accused of not adequately representing the interests of the community because of the group’s agreement with Laidlaw, said she was pleased the issue had cleared its final political hurdle.

“I’m glad this part of it is over,” Griffin said. “We understand that there will probably be lawsuits, and we respect any other group’s need to do what they want to do.”

The dispute between Val Verde residents began four months ago after the civic association, which for years had battled Laidlaw’s plan to expand Chiquita Canyon, agreed to allow the trash company to operate the landfill until 2019 and to increase its capacity from 3 million tons to 23 million tons.

In return, Laidlaw agreed to stop dumping chemically treated human waste at the site and pay Val Verde a fee that could range from $250,000 to $280,000 each year depending on how much garbage is dumped at the landfill.

On Tuesday, Lewis Berti, a dissident member of the civic association, said his colleagues had committed the entire community to a deal that “is nothing but dollars in lieu of mitigations.”

Patricia Schifferle, a consultant at Clean Water Action, said she is concerned the deal prohibits the community from receiving money from the trash company until after the dump no longer faces lawsuits and has cleared the permit process.

“This is corporate extortion,” Schifferle told the board. “We feel this is a very serious precedent you are about to set, a national precedent.”

But Charles Leonard, a senior vice president of the company, dismissed the accusation, saying the payments to the community are based on increasing the dump’s capacity, which the company cannot legally do until it receives the necessary permits and the lawsuits are resolved.