CALIFORNIA: Los Angeles Waste-to-Energy Plan Passed Unanimously

The Los Angeles' City Council has enacted bold moves to lead America's cities to a new era of trash-to-energy conversion alternatives to landfill operations.

In a series of recent decisions, the City Council not only unanimously adopted a 20-year plan to permanently alter waste removal in Los Angeles - Councilman Greig Smith's RENEW LA plan - but also began implementation of the plan by firmly voting (10-1) to divert 1/6th of the L.A.'s daily 3,600 tons of waste to landfills outside of Los Angeles County for the next 5 years at a cost of nearly $2 million more a year.

This obligates the utilities of the City of Los Angeles to identify, site, and build waste conversion facilities within the next five years to reduce and convert the trash into CT products such as heat, electricity, fuel, and benign chemical products without violating air quality restrictions. It is believed that 75%-85% of trash not already being recycled could be converted through technologies like gasification, pyrolysis, thermal depolymerization, catalytic cracking, and hydroysis/fermentation into CT products.

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RENEW LA PASSES UNANIMOUSLY
Los Angeles City Councilman Greig Smith’s RENEW LA policy was unanimously passed Friday, Feb. 17 by the City Council as the resource management blueprint to guide the City for the next 20 years. It leads Los Angeles out of landfilling and uses the material that has traditionally been disposed of and recovers it for beneficial use in the form of green electricity, alternative fuel sources and manufacturing feedstocks. Smith also persuaded the Council to back his efforts to form a negotiating team to vet out alternate plans for disposal of the City’s waste, rather than renew the City’s contract with BFI to dump it in Sunshine Canyon Landfill in the North San Fernando Valley.

Daily News Editorial on Sunshine Canyon
The Daily News ran an editorial Feb. 12, urging the City to find an alternative to extending BFI's five-year contract to dump all of its trash in Sunshine Canyon landfill in Granada Hills. The editorial said that Councilman Greig Smith's RENEW LA plan was "the first time anyone has come up with an actual time line for the end to the city's dumping."
Diverting 600 tons of trash to remote landfills is considered a crucial first step in Los Angeles' plan to end its use of Sunshine Canyon within five years. Officials also hope to increase recycling and develop trash-to-energy plants.

Dump deal in works
Council supports costly diversion
Kerry Cavanaugh of the Daily News wrote a story about L.A. Council approval (10-1) of a costly plan to divert "600 tons of trash daily to dumps in Riverside and Kings counties, even though it would cost nearly $2 million more a year."

City Council Approves Deal to Reduce Dumping at Sunshine Canyon Landfill by 600 Tons per Day
Voting unanimously on March 17, 2006 the Los Angeles City Council voted to break the status quo of renewing a single site exclusive landfill contract to handle L.A. residential waste.

SCAG Supports RENEW LA as Model For Other Cities
The Southern California Association of Governments sent a letter to Mayor Villaraigosa and Council President Garcetti in support of Councilman Greig Smith's RENEW LA plan. SCAG, the nation’s largest regional planning agency, is updating its policy plan for handling solid waste and said RENEW LA's conversion technologies could serve as a model for other cities.



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