The mudslides that damaged dozens of homes in La Cañada Flintridge earlier this month have dumped nearly 2 million tons of mud into the county’s system of debris catch basins – so much debris that officials say they might need to truck it to the dump.
Crews have been racing to extract the mud, especially before a predicted round of storms hits the Los Angeles area later this week. The catch basins are crucial to protecting homes, holding mud falling off the hillsides and keeping it from flowing into streets and homes.
But as crews have been emptying the basins, they have been running out of space to dump the muck. They have been loading the mud into areas controlled by the county flood control district, but there’s so much of it that they may be forced to begin transporting the debris to landfills, officials said.
As a result, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved steps that would make it easier for the county to dump mud at the Sunshine Canyon and Scholl Canyon landfills for the next 90 days. The landfills are located, respectively, in the northern San Fernando Valley and Glendale.
The measures include allowing the county to exceed regular limits on how much waste can be dumped at a landfill. County fees on dumping costs associated with the mud would be waived, and the Public Works Department is being asked to work with the state to waive additional fees.
Public works officials estimated that it will cost $20 million to $30 million this year to remove mud and other debris from the catch basins for the current rainy season. Because it will take several years before enough vegetation returns to the San Gabriel Mountains to hold the soil and keep it from washing off hillsides, county officials estimate that the costs will continue for an extended period, totaling up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
— Rong-Gong Lin II at the L.A. County Hall of Administration
Photo credit: Los Angeles Times