By Julie BUTCHER

“I’m disappointed that none of the questions we took quite a bit of time this weekend to send to you were answered in this presentation,” said Scholl Canyon resident and community activist Jackie Gish when she addressed the Glendale City Council at its Tuesday evening meeting. “In September 2022, I was under the impression that some of the councilmembers wanted the [Scholl Canyon] landfill to close as soon as possible. At that time, the estimate was December 2025.”

Gish continued, “Now we’re in March 2024, and the new estimate is mid- to late 2027. So we’ve slid 18 to 24 months in 18 months; basically it’s moved out as fast as we’re going along. At this rate, we will never close Scholl.”

Assistant public works director Dan Hardgrove updated the Council on plans to close the Scholl Canyon Landfill.

The landfill is 535 acres, including the 126-acre golf course that is built on a section of the landfill that “ceased landfilling” in 1972. Glendale owns the majority of the landfill along with the County of Los Angeles, which owns 60 acres, and Southern California Edison, which owns 25 acres. LA County Sanitation District operates the facility. Currently, sections of the landfill are getting final cover, work that is expected to be completed by fall, Hardgrove reported. The landfill is permitted based on its final fill elevation of 1525 feet and approximately filled with 33.4 million tons of trash. As of December 2023, the available remaining capacity is 1.2 million tons. Permitted to accept up to 3400 tons per day, tonnage varies depending on economic and other factors.

When the Council was last updated in September 2022, the daily average was 1400 tons leading to the estimate of closure in mid-2025 to mid-2026. The base tipping fee at that time was $61.10 per ton. Now the daily average is 1069 tons, and the tipping fee is $95.46 per ton. The estimated closure date is now mid- to late-2027. Revenues have dropped from $11.2 million in FY 22/23 to $9.2 million predicted for the current and future fiscal years.

The decline in tonnage is attributed to the success of food waste and organics diversion programs and other efforts to reduce trash going to landfills.

Hardgrove addressed other current landfill issues noting that there are protocols for responding to temperatures above 145 degrees (the highest temperature recorded at Scholl in the past two years is 139.5) and that redundancies are built in to monitor the gas collection system. Stormwater diversion and control facilities are designed to accommodate the calculated 100-year, 24-hour storm. The site is regularly inspected for ponding and erosion.

“Anybody remember Jim Starbird, former city manager way back when?” Mike Mohill asked the Council. “The landfill was supposed to be closed that many years ago, but it was not. Why? It’s called money, money, money. We need the revenue. For what? Salaries and pensions.”

“My concern is the noise,” he continued. “The residents who live in Scholl Canyon, which is where I live, want it closed and want the noise to be minimized. You all ran for City Council and asked for the votes of the people who live in Scholl Canyon, and you asked for money, and they gave it to you.”

Councilmember Paula Devine asked how Scholl Canyon tipping fees compare to others. Staff reported they are on the high side but are relatively comparable: Sunshine charges $98 per ton and adds an environmental and fuel fee; Simi Valley charges $83 per ton to its non-Ventura County customers.

“I’m producing less garbage than ever – it’s all going into the compost or recycling,” Devine observed. Efforts at encouraging waste diversion are working, staff said.

Mayor Dan Brotman asked if expanding the waste shed to include areas of the city of Los Angeles could help accelerate the filling and closure of the landfill.

Councilmember Ara Najarian offered an alternative view: “I’m looking at it from a different way given that the landfill’s life and capacity are limited. It’s something that gives us a lot of economic – and environmental – benefit. We would otherwise be placing our garbage on rail cars or having it trucked out to farther locations. If anything, I think we should limit our waste shed just for Glendale – in terms of noise and the number of trucks – we can take up to 1.3 million more tons. I would much rather that we use that and extend the life. I mean fill it more slowly. Paradoxically, our efforts to reduce trash – the plastics ban and the rest – have resulted in a 30% reduction in average daily deposits. I think our priority should be to preserve this for the city as much as we can and to deal with issues we’ve heard about at other landfills – the leaking toxic gases and thermal events – as carefully as possible.”

“I wouldn’t want LA to come in and fill it up and then tomorrow it’s all full and we have an additional burden to get rid of it,” Najarian argued.

Mayor Brotman responded: “We wanted to accelerate the closure because we want to get to what’s next – maybe putting solar there, maybe putting a park there. It’s a trade-off. But we did promise the community that we would close it as soon as we could. I want it to fill up faster.”

Councilmember Elen Asatryan agreed.

“We made a commitment to the community. How do we get back to that as a deadline?” she asked regarding the new estimated closure timeline.

Mayor Brotman responded to comments by Mohill: “I can’t close the landfill 10 years in the past. This council is the first to vote definitively to close the landfill. We never said a year; we estimated a fill rate.”

The Council requested further reports on the process of closing the landfill.

Earlier in the meeting, the Council approved the expenditure of Measure R funds on two large roadway projects. According to the staff report, “[t]he scope of work includes multi-modal improvements, signalized intersection improvements, transit improvements, and additional roadway improvements along Central Avenue between Colorado Street and Los Feliz Road and Glendale Avenue between Broadway and Verdugo Road.”

Measure R is a half-cent sales tax for Los Angeles County that finances new transportation projects and programs. In November 2008, Measure R was approved by two-thirds majority, committing a projected $40 billion to traffic relief and transportation upgrades throughout the County over its 30-year life span. The city’s share of Measure R funds for Highway Operational Improvements is approximately $98 million.

The South Central Avenue Multimodal Improvements Project will cost $3,000,000 and the North Glendale Avenue Multimodal Improvements Project will cost $4,000,000.

Also discussed was a proposal by Councilmember Ardy Kassakhian to agendize a discussion to changes in the Council’s process of selecting a mayor.

Council member Najarian spoke in opposition to the action, which was ultimately adopted on a 3-2 vote: “We did discuss this in 2021 and Mr. Kassakhian, Councilmember Devine and Mayor Brotman all made very clear and concise remarks regarding a fair and equitable rotation – as our current ordinance indicates. What we were trying to do at that point was to remove politics and game playing and perhaps sticking it to someone who endorsed a candidate [that Occidental alumni] didn’t care for. The system worked for councilmember turned mayor Devine. It worked for councilmember turned mayor Kassakhian. And it worked for councilmember turned mayor Brotman.”

“The problem is we’re on the eve of selecting a new mayor,” Najarian went on. “So the timing of this is totally suspect. A better time to discuss this would be in May. Bringing this up at this point is what we were trying to avoid. The vote was unanimous.”

Najarian asked the city attorney if there was time to amend the city ordinance before the mayoral selection process on April 2.

        “The timing of this is going to be very divisive,” Najarian said. “It’s not something we need to deal with now. I can assure you … I intend to seek the mayor’s selection on April 2 and there are many in the community [who] will follow the process closely. I’m willing to have the conversation but not on the eve of the selection. That leaves a bad taste as if it were for political, endorsing Jordan Henry purposes, opposing Grayson purposes, not being crazy about bike lanes purposes, supporting the Armenian parents purposes – that’s the sort of flavor this is getting and it’s going to enflame the community. I would caution us to wait, perhaps until we have a new Council.”

The next meeting of the Glendale City Council is scheduled for Tuesday, March 26.