Almost two weeks ago, Annika Oebel was at Valencia High School along with hundreds of other parents in a meeting about an upcoming school trip her daughter was taking.
“It was just … people’s eyes were watering. It was very potent,” she said.
Some were looking around, trying to figure out the smell.
Oebel knew.
“(The smell) was as potent as it’s ever been for me by Hasley Hills,” the Castaic resident said. “No one really knew what it was, but I recognized it immediately.”
Oebel was one of hundreds of Castaic residents who packed the Castaic Middle School auditorium for the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s first community meeting over problems at Chiquita Canyon Landfill since joining the roster of agencies working on the issues since the middle of last year.
The problem has been a smoldering subsurface reaction that’s caused the landfill to collapse more 16 feet over the past year, but the bigger problem is the overwhelming amount of leachate, which has tested positive for toxic levels of benzene, a carcinogen, and landfill gases, particularly the smelly, sulfuric dimethyl sulfide, both of which have tormented the community since about April, according to community complaints.
Oebel shared her concern that this was no longer a Castaic or a Val Verde issue, it’s becoming a Santa Clarita Valley issue, she said, and she wanted to make sure residents were aware.
Oebel took her turn at the microphone toward the end of the evening, after many of her neighbors had taken the two-hour question-and-answer portion to share their anger, frustration or sorrow at what’s happened to their community, health and property values as a result of the landfill.
“If you think Castaic is a pain, wait until Stevenson Ranch starts smelling this stuff,” she said.
Their comments and questions were emotional and, at times, shouted in belligerent tones that reflected months of frustration.
Several times federal officials said they understood residents’ frustration and sought to validate their concerns, particularly when it came to the leachate.
The chemical byproduct of rainwater, filtered garbage, benzene and landfill gases has been accumulating on the site “in tanks and pipes” at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gallons a week.
The landfill filed an emergency request not to discharge any of its chemical byproduct until it’s treated on site, as the result of its recent violations for discharging leachate with toxic levels of benzene to a facility in Gardena that was not certified to treat it.
Thanne Berg from the Office of Regional Counsel for the EPA previously said the purpose of the meeting was for the response agencies to hear from the public and inform them on what’s being done to address the problems.
The result was residents sharing their frustration at various volumes for more than two hours.
It came out during the discussion that the landfill’s storage of leachate on-site is taking up its pumping capacity, meaning there are fewer resources to remove the leachate from the area that’s worsened.
When asked why this was allowed to happen, Berg was candid.
“This is why we’re there daily, because we were concerned they’re not handling this correctly. We didn’t like the fact that so much was accumulating on site,” Berg said. “We didn’t like that that’s how it’s being handled. We didn’t think it was a very thought-out approach. So, that’s why we’ll be there and try to figure out a better way to do it. And we’re going to be there every day.”
In response to a request for comment Friday, landfill officials referred to a previous statement by John Perkey, vice president of the landfill’s owner, Waste Connections, which indicated the landfill is working cooperatively with all its regulators.
Despite the handful of agencies, including the South Coast Air Quality Management District, California EPA, the federal EPA, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the county’s chief environmental health specialist Los Angeles County Local Enforcement Agency, residents continued to receive mixed messages on the need for emergency declarations. Residents also expressed disappointment over their requests to close the landfill and unsatisfying answers to important questions like, “Are our children safe?”
A water official reiterated previous claims that there’s been no evidence yet of impacts to the area’s groundwater; however, the official also said it’s something the agency is watching as part of its latest order.
EPA officials also stated that the reaction at the landfill is something that could take years to solve, but their intent is to lessen the impact of the smell significantly much sooner than that.
A member of an EPA task force said a 30-mm thick geomembranous cover is expected to be in place over the landfill’s 30-acre reaction area by April 26, and there’s hope that it will help.
Q-and-A
In response to several questions from the online chat, as well as some being shouted from the audience more than once, Alison Watanabe, who facilitated the discussion for the EPA, said she did not have anyone who could definitively answer the question on children’s safety.
She acknowledged the importance of the question and said it would be included in a “Frequently Asked Questions” segment on a website the agency created for the landfill.
The website also posted Thursday’s presentation.
The most recent independent health study conducted by the county was commissioned prior to the discovery of how widespread the leachate problems were.
Residents left Thursday seeking answers to why the landfill wasn’t being held more accountable, with the agencies repeatedly stating they were more focused on stabilizing what’s obviously a very active issue that’s plaguing the community.
There was no information available Thursday from any of the agencies involved regarding any financial penalties placed on the landfill due to over 10,000 substantiated complaints by the AQMD and over 100 violations.
Zanalee Zmily, a senior environmental scientist representing the DTSC, said the agency had not levied fines yet because it was focusing on mitigation, but that the situation was part of an active investigation. Both the EPA and water officials issued similar statements on background Thursday evening.
In response to numerous requests to close down the landfill — including another request made recently by Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita — Rachel Zwillinger, assistant general counsel for enforcement for the California EPA, said that was something the task force currently is not pursuing because it could potentially slow the response to the emergency situation, which is necessary to address.
Zwillinger also said because the reaction was in a closed section of the landfill, a closure would not help officials address the crisis.
Harry Allen, a team lead for the U.S. EPA, also said Thursday he would be leading a multiagency team that would be based locally and supervise daily monitoring of the landfill.
Conflicting declarations
Garcia opened the meeting by speaking to the coordination of multiple agencies involved and working together, as well as the bipartisan call he was leading for the governor’s office to declare a state of emergency.
He said it was one of the few things that both parties agreed on, referring to sign-ons by Rep. Julie Brownley, D-Ventura, and Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth.
However, representatives from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said only that agencies are “exploring all the options” in response to a request for a timeline on processing such a request.
Schiavo’s office indicated she was meeting with state agencies Wednesday regarding the response to the situation at Chiquita Canyon landfill, which was prompted by her Feb. 22 letter to state agencies.
Following the public question-and-answer session, two officials Thursday indicated a local or state declaration of emergency remained unlikely and somewhat unnecessary because all of the agencies that could have responded already have.
“Generally speaking, the local state of emergency would be because we needed something that we didn’t already have to respond to an incident,” said Stephanie English, a field representative for L.A. County 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the Santa Clarita Valley.
A situation where the state-level declaration might help, she said, would be if there were a wildfire that would call for interagency or even multistate resources to coordinate or if there were funding concerns. For Chiquita, the agencies that have gathered in the multiagency group represent “all the tools in the toolbox,” she added.
State Water Board
The most recent announcement Thursday in terms of landfill response was the formation of another task force, a multi-agency coordination group led by local, state and federal on-scene coordinators.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board issued an 11-page order against Chiquita Canyon and its operator, Waste Connections.
Jenny Newman, assistant executive officer for the board, explained the order Thursday, which listed a number of concerns about the landfill’s response so far, in addition to ordering off-site monitoring wells, something residents have been requesting for months.
Newman also said the agency was still investigating reports of leachate being discharged into the Santa Clara River.
The landfill must submit plans for monitoring wells, which would be between the southern border of the landfill and the Santa Clara River, by April 22.
