Los Angeles County Fire Department officials confirmed a release of hazardous materials occurred Thursday night at Chiquita Canyon Landfill, after Environmental Protection Agency officials reported the leachate leak in a holding tank was contained to the property.
A representative from the Fire Department’s media information line said Friday morning there were no details available regarding the call Thursday night around 5:52 p.m.
Maria Grycan, a community services liaison for the L.A. County Fire Department, stated that no injuries were reported from the incident.
It was considered a “static” incident, referring to its containment, and there was no fire associated with the incident, she said.
An email from an EPA spokesman confirmed Friday morning “the Response Multi-Agency Coordination (R-MAC) Group received a California Office of Emergency Services report of an approximately 3,000-gallon leachate spill at Tank Farm No. 7 at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill,” according to Michael Brogan, press officer for the R-MAC, which is part of the federal response to the landfill’s problems.
The landfill’s ongoing problems are the subject of a meeting of the hearing board Saturday morning for the South Coast Air Quality Management District at the Santa Clarita Performing Arts Center at College of the Canyons’ Valencia campus for a separate but related problem, the air pollution coming from the landfill.
After the media information line indicated there was no information available regarding the call, a fire official who was part of the initial response from Fire Station 76 on Thursday said he was not able to discuss the incident without permission.
“Two U.S. EPA R-MAC on-scene coordinators and the incident commander went to the tank farm to gather information,” Brogan wrote Friday. “The tanks farms are used to store treated leachate awaiting transport offsite for disposal.”
He also indicated in his email that the assessment by the R-MAC members revealed that the spill was the result of “operator error.”
“The operator was transferring treated leachate awaiting disposal to a storage tank when the accidental spill occurred. The spilled material did not breach containment and was collected in the sump. The recovered liquids have been returned to the tanks. Surface staining is now being addressed. There were no impacts outside of the containment area on the landfill,” according to his email.
Brogan said Friday that treated leachate is not toxic, but it would be considered a hazardous material.
Leachate occurs as a regular occurrence at every landfill, but the massive amount of leachate being produced at the Chiquita landfill, which has been estimated at close to 1 million gallons a month, has caused a crisis at the facility, impacting the community.
He said the spill was not related to the west toe scrim work currently under way at the landfill.
The landfill has garnered more than 20,000 substantiated complaints since the start of its problems more than a year ago.
The scrim work that started this month is for a nearly 2-acre portion of the western slope of the landfill, which is expected to provide significant relief to the situation in approximately six weeks, according to Brogan.
“The project involves the removal of a plastic cover called a scrim currently covering the west slope, installation of a drain and sumps to better control the leachate, followed by the installation of a geomembrane cover,” he wrote in a July email.
The work is part of a unilateral order the landfill was issued in regard to its problems.
The EPA has two entities supervising the problems at the landfill: a Multiagency Critical Action Team, called an MCAT, and a Response Multiagency Coordination, called an R-MAC.
The MCAT was formed in November after the EPA became involved, and it is the lead agency in the task force. The MCAT also includes: the California Environmental Protection Agency, California Air Resources Board, CalRecycle, Department of Toxic Substances Control, Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, South Coast Air Quality Management District, and the Los Angeles County departments of Public Works, Public Health and Planning.
One of the R-MAC’s listed objectives is to “keep the community and other interested parties informed through participation.”
