Los Angeles County's Storm Cleanup Costs Soar

Los Angeles - Digging out catch basins that protect foothill neighborhoods in Los Angeles County will cost up to $30 million this winter, a county official estimated today.

Debris or catch basins, which are designed to trap rocks, mud and timber but to let water flow, form "the first line of defense to protect the communities" below, Supervisor Michael Antonovich said, adding that the dam-like structures from La Canada Flintridge to the Ventura County line "need to be cleaned out immediately."

Rain is likely by Saturday.

Getting rid of the muck -- an estimated 1 million cubic yards of it -- is part of the problem, Antonovich said. Several county sites designated for dumping sediment are nearly filled to capacity, he said.

Many of the roughly 30 catch basins in the Station Fire burn area were filled or nearly so during a Feb. 6 storm.

Landfills are an alternative, but landfill space is precious -- the county would have to pay a fee for every truckload -- and dumps are limited to how much mud they can accept, county officials told the board.

The Board of Supervisors, at Antonovich's recommendation, waived daily and weekly tonnage limits at the 435-acre Sunshine Canyon landfill for 90 days to accommodate the emergency need.

The waiver enables the landfill operator to accept up to 64,800 tons of material from the county basins in addition to the 12,100 tons of commercial and residential waste it is normally permitted to handle.

The board also waived county fees at the landfill, which is just west of Golden State (5) Freeway at the mouth of the Newhall Pass, and partly in Los Angeles and partly in an unincorporated area.

The supervisors also directed staffers to seek temporary waivers of limits and fees from state and local agencies at Sunshine and Scholl Canyon landfills.

However, Mark Pestrella, deputy director of the Department of Public Works, indicated that the county's need is far from temporary. Over the next three to five years, he estimated that debris removal due to seasonal storms in the area damaged by the Station Fire would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The department had a 20-year plan for managing sediment placement that Pestrella said will now likely serve the county for only five years.

Pestrella praised the board for offering access to the landfill, which he said was a necessary option to safely manage the clean-up of debris basins. It "gives us the sort of breathing room" and redundancy needed in an emergency situation, Pestrella said.

The department is also seeking emergency permitting from the state for an additional sediment placement site in La Tuna Canyon, as well as considering a range of longer term solutions.

In the long run, "we don't want to fill up our landfills," Pestrella said, adding that "nothing is going to be left untouched" as the department seeks "environmentally responsible" options for dealing with moving millions tons of sediment in future years.

The board's vote, taken on an emergency basis, was 3-0 in favor of Antonovich's recommendations. Supervisors Don Knabe and Mark Ridley-Thomas were absent.