State OKs Expansion of Dump in Azusa

SACRAMENTO —  Swayed by a landfill owner’s offer of $20 million to help clean the polluted ground water of the San Gabriel Valley, the state Water Resources Control Board on Tuesday approved the controversial expansion of an Azusa dump.

The board’s 3-2 vote culminated two years of debate that has extended far beyond the 302-acre quarry where trash has been dumped for the last 30 years.

Tuesday’s four-hour hearing pitted opponents such as Carl Boronkay, head of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California--one of the nation’s largest water suppliers--against proponents such as William D. Ruckelshaus, twice the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and now the head of the parent company that owns the landfill.

‘Watershed Case’

“We thought this was a watershed case, not to make a pun, and we wanted to draw the line,” said Boronkay, whose agency supplies some water to the San Gabriel Valley.

“There are some things that are simply not the subject of surrender,” said Burton J. Gindler, attorney for the Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster, an organization of water suppliers adamantly against the dump’s proposal to quadruple its daily capacity of 1,500 tons.

Despite pleas from Boronkay and other state and regional water officials, the board predicated its acceptance of the landfill expansion on an unusual offer Ruckelshaus made last month and reiterated Tuesday. Ruckelshaus is chairman of the board of Browning-Ferris Industries, the parent company of the landfill operator, Azusa Land Reclamation Co.

With assurances from Ruckelshaus, the board, which oversees the state’s water supply, approved the dump expansion on the condition that Brown-Ferris Industries place $20 million in escrow in the next 30 days.

Will Remove Pollutants

That money would be spent to build treatment plants to remove toxic pollutants from the drinking water supply. The company has said it is not responsible for the ground water pollution in the San Gabriel Valley and it wants to help resolve the pollution.

“Everybody wants you to pick up (garbage) but nobody wants you to put it down,” Ruckelshaus complained in his statement to the board.

As another condition, the board also required the dump owner to implement an elaborate system of liners, drains and pumps that are designed to protect the water table. The board also required an additional guarantee that Ruckelshaus offered. His firm, he said, will raise by 25 feet the lowest level of the dump, in an effort to further prevent leaching into the water table.

“Our system will work,” Ruckelshaus said, countering the opinion of water officials who say that all dumps, no matter how well lined, leak into the water table.

The officials of the Main San Gabriel Water Basin and Metropolitan Water District had rejected the $20-million offer a week after it was made.

Because of the complicated and interconnected nature of water in California, the Azusa dump issue, opponents say, has ramifications far beyond the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles County.

“The risk is too great,” said Gordon Cologne, a former state senator who was co-author 20 years ago of the legislation that created the state board he addressed.

The San Gabriel Valley basin supplies water for 1 million people from Alhambra to La Verne.

The landfill is the least active in Los Angeles County, where there is less and less space to put a growing amount of trash. The dump covers 80 acres of a 302-acre rock quarry, which still is in operation.