TV Reviews : Special on Garbage Crisis Offers No Easy Solutions

“Out of the Dumps,” the latest episode of the KCET series “By the Year 2000,” airing at 7:30 tonight on Channel 28, takes a quick look at Los Angeles’ garbage crisis. And, while adding nothing new to the discussion, it is a timely reminder that this growing problem will not go away on its own.

Los Angeles County is throwing away 50,000 tons of garbage a day, enough to fill the Queen Mary--a rate that will soon exhaust the county’s capacity to handle its daily waste.

In the program’s opening segment, we see trucks being turned away at the Puente Hills landfill--the largest garbage dump in the county and the second-largest in the nation--at noon each day as the landfill reaches its daily quota. These trucks leave, looking for other places to drop their noxious cargo.

The bureaucrats’ solution: Enlarge existing landfills and open new ones. The problem: Nobody wants one in his back yard. Incineration? Another not-in-my-back-yard solution.

“Out of the Dumps” explores the alternatives, offering an in-studio discussion with a doctor, city attorney and president of a waste-disposal company and a separate interview with Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus. However, in a choppy attempt to be thorough, producer Steve Talley has come up with a show that has the look and feel of an extended nightly news segment.