Get on Board the Trash Train

LAST April, when the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts broke ground on a new mega-landfill in Imperial County, mayors and council members from La Habra Heights, La Verne, La Puente, Pasadena and West Covina attended. They recognized the significance of the first-of-its-kind remote landfill that will bury our trash far from San Gabriel Valley and Whittier-area residents.

On Thursday, an equally significant milestone was reached in the slow but steady effort to close the Puente Hills Landfill – for good – and begin shipping our waste to the desert landfill east of Glamis. Industry’s City Council voted 4-0 to approve a rail yard facility at 2500 and 2520 Pellissier Place that will take trash that used to go to Puente Hills, load it onto train cars and carry it to the desert landfill.

We will take the time and mark that historic approval of what sounded innocuous on the agenda – “an intermodal rail yard” – but represents the cornerstone in the architecture of L.A. County’s solid-waste solution.

At Thursday’s City Council meeting, few dignitaries who had been supportive in the past of the “waste-by-rail” solution attended. But we suspect their absence was tacit approval for a project that must go forward. And we agree.

In the late 1980s, another “solution” was proposed. The Sanitation Districts and a private company wanted to build giant garbage burners that would incinerate trash and leave toxic ash and plumes of smoke to foul our already smoggy air. The largest grass- roots effort ever seen in our Valley helped defeat these proposals; those in South Los Angeles did the same.

Instead, recycling measures were adopted by the Legislature, requiring cities to recycle 50 percent of their waste. Bottle and can redemption bills were passed. All have reduced the amount of trash being buried in landfills and extended their capacities.

Also, the recycling industry has grown up, resulting in mechanized trash separating facilities called MRFs (material recovery facilities). One in Downey and another at Puente Hills, which opened in 2005, and a third off Valley Boulevard operated by Athens Disposal are some of the newest. After recyclables are shipped overseas or to other manufacturers; what’s left is the waste that will be offloaded from trucks in closed containers directly onto rail cars.

Also on the table during those regional meetings held in Duarte was the idea of siting landfills far from population centers, where pollution would have less impact on human lives. And instead of using trucks, the cleaner, more efficient train option would be used.

While the waste-by-rail train won’t be leaving the station until either 2011 or 2012, it is an accomplishment today – for the public that called for innovative solutions 20 years ago, for the Sanitation Districts for putting the pieces together and for the city of Industry for approving this unique rail yard (a Conditional Use Permit hearing is next and is set for June 26). Soon, the Puente Hills Landfill will join the Spadra Landfill near Pomona/Walnut, the Azusa Landfill and the BKK Corp. Landfill in West Covina – all closed and all serving the public in new uses.

(c) 2008 San Gabriel Valley Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.