Ahead of Tuesday’s Chiquita Canyon Landfill Community Advisory Committee, L.A. County 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger sent an update that the landfill could reach its capacity and be forced to shut down by February, potentially a little longer if it continues to limit intake.
According to Barger’s letter Friday, the move comes due to state water officials, namely the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, denying permission back in June for the facility to expand into Cell B.
“The decision by the Los Angeles Water Board effectively requires that they continue to place waste only in the existing cell within the landfill where they have authorization,” Barger wrote, adding the landfill is reporting a daily-intake reduction from 6,000 tons of trash to 2,000 tons.
County officials said their independent calculation leaves the landfill with approximately “two months of remaining capacity” to take in new waste for disposal.
That assumes the 2,000-ton rate, she added, and the landfill could further reduce intake in order to extend that opening.
“I want to emphasize that the landfill is likely to run out of capacity to bring in new waste in a short amount of time, unless they are able to obtain authorization from the Los Angeles Regional Water Board to move into a new cell within the landfill,” she wrote. “Moving forward, county departments will keep the CAC apprised of updates on the remaining capacity within the landfill for the disposal of waste at the monthly CAC meetings.”
Water officials denied the landfill permission to put waste into an additional cell because of its lingering problems and the agency’s cited inadequacies with the landfill’s response to those problems. The issues are related to a subsurface reaction the landfill has been dealing with for more than 18 months.
“Neither the initial response nor the revised master plan include an adequate approach to contain the subsurface smoldering reaction,” according to the California Water Boards’ Sept. 25 response to a Chiquita Canyon Landfill appeal of the order not to allow expansion. The agency also said the proposed slope repairs were deemed inadequate.
The reaction is causing an overwhelming stink that leaves residents nauseated and has prompted children in school near the landfills to stay indoors at times, according to speakers at a recent town hall meeting. To date, landfill officials have not figured out the cause of the problem or how to stop it. Agency officials said during a community meeting in October that the problems could take up to a decade to resolve.
Barger also recently called for the L.A. County Department of Public Health to conduct a study in response to claims of a cancer cluster by residents of a community known as the “presidents streets” in Val Verde next to the landfill.
Residents recently lost a court battle that sought to close the landfill, but there are still hundreds of lawsuits from Castaic and Val Verde residents who are claiming they’ve suffered health and property damage because of the landfill. Those lawsuits are pending a court date in a Downtown Los Angeles federal courthouse after their transfer from Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The landfill’s ongoing pollution problems are the subject of a unilateral administrative order from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseen by joint county, state and federal agencies, including CalRecycle, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, the State Water Boards and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, among others.
Some of the lingering issues residents have been complaining about for months include a lack of transparency surrounding the landfill’s reimbursement program, questions about potential impacts to the water table and the pending health assessments.
The Chiquita Canyon Landfill Community Advisory Committee is meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Castaic Library (27971 Sloan Canyon Road). The meeting also will be held virtually: bit.ly/43cXOKI.
