Waste-by-Rail Solution Gets on Track : Garbage: Trash is loaded onto trains and shipped from the City of Commerce to an eastern Utah landfill in a demonstration touted as part of the answer to Los Angeles County’s disposal woes.

As dozens of officials from Los Angeles County communities watched Thursday, a huge crane lifted metal containers with 20 tons of garbage each onto flatbed rail cars, bound for a landfill 800 miles away.

The train, consisting of four cars and a locomotive, left the City of Commerce on a trip to eastern Utah to show how Los Angeles trash can be packaged and carted off to faraway desert and mountain locales, said officials, who touted it as one of the solutions to the region’s waste disposal problems.

“It is not going to be the singular solution but ultimately it will be the biggest piece in the trash disposal mosaic in L.A. County,” La Verne Councilman Thomas Harvey said.

Harvey heads a countywide group of officials studying the “rail-haul” solution. Environmental pressures and opposition from neighborhood groups against landfills and proposed ones have caused public officials throughout Southern California to embrace the waste-by-rail idea.

The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County--which arranges daily for disposal of one-third of the trash in the county--staged the first local demonstration of rail-haul.

On hand were officials from a newly opened, 3,000-acre Utah landfill billed as having the biggest capacity of any facility in the nation. The train loaded with trash is scheduled to arrive Saturday in East Carbon City, where for most of this century coal mining was king. Now, community leaders there say trash will be king.

The East Carbon Canyon Development Corp. opened its facility in September on the outskirts of East Carbon City. Paul Clark, mayor of the town of 1,300 in eastern Utah, told the gathering that his community is willing to take as much trash as Southern California can send.

To haul the trash this week, the landfill company charged $40 a ton.

Although that is nearly twice the average disposal rate locally, trash officials say that in several years $40 to $50 a ton is expected to be competitive in comparison to charges at the eight public and private dumps where capacity is dwindling fast.

Sanitation Districts officials, who oversee the nation’s second-biggest landfill at Puente Hills, say they are optimistic about negotiating with the Utah facility and with five private companies working on developing rail-haul landfill sites in Southern California desert areas.

One potential site where trash could be shipped by rail from Los Angeles County faced new problems Thursday.

Opponents of the proposed Eagle Mountain landfill in Riverside County sued the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, contending that the board’s 3-2 approval of the project was based on a flawed environmental study.

The Utah site, although much farther away than the others, is expected to compare favorably in the prices charged for hauling trash. If a rail-haul network is established, Carbon County officials are talking about charging 50 cents a ton on trash coming from out of state while at the proposed Southern California sites the similar levy is estimated to be about $5 a ton.

All of this means that the residents of Los Angeles County will benefit from the competition among several disposal companies, Sanitation Districts officials said.

But before rail haul becomes a reality, facilities to transfer trash to trains have to be built. “There still are a number of hoops we have to go through,” Harvey said.

Last week, the board that governs the Puente Hills dump approved an environmental study of a plan to construct such a facility for trash-to-train transfer. Although there has been opposition to the project from Hacienda Heights neighbors, Harvey said the first trains could be running by 1994.

Another city official with nothing but praise for the demonstration was Covina Mayor Henry Morgan, who said “this is a viable solution that will solve the waste problem for the next 100 years,” when combined with recycling.

“Sure, it will have an impact on the environment. But it is pretty hard to look at something like this . . . and have a great deal of criticism,” Morgan said.