Trash politics

Every Los Angeles political story has a backstory. At his blog, John Stodder takes off from the recent news about Sunshine Canyon landfill to reconstruct how, when he was the senior advisor for environmental policy to then-Mayor Tom Bradley, Los Angeles came to have citywide curbside recycling. It could be of interest to anyone following the South Central Community Garden story, since the land where the farms are located only became available because the trash-burning project he writes about was allowed to die. Stodder dredges up other ancient political history too.

The mayor was coming off a landslide defeat in his second try for governor, and some of George Deukmejian’s surrogates had made hay with the city’s leaky wastewater system spilling raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay. This not only hurt Bradley’s chances to rally the Democratic troops against the incumbent, but it also created an opening for Bradley to be challenged in 1989 from the left, by a candidate who would promise a more environmental administration. That candidate looked to be then-Councilman, now-Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

My new assignment led to a Charlie Brown moment. I was playing softball at Will Rogers Park with a group that included a bunch of local Democratic operatives and activists. I didn’t know all of them. When a friend introduced me as “the guy whose job is to make Tom Bradley look like a good environmentalist,” the team’s reaction was: Haaa-haaaa-haaaa-haaaa!

To answer John's question, yes there is someone else who remembers the LANCER project. I did a national reporting tour of trash-to-energy plants as part of my LANCER coverage and still recognize the distinctive sour aroma that wafts from mountains of collected garbage. Trash allowed to sit for weeks smells the same pretty much everywhere.