The bad news about a terrible situation in Castaic became even more troubling Tuesday evening for residents impacted by ongoing problems at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill: The subsurface reaction that’s causing the landfill’s stench isn’t going away.
It’s growing.
Just weeks after the landfill announced it was ending its assistance program amid claims from the landfill that the facility’s problems were getting better, a state official Tuesday presented a much different outlook at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill Community Advisory Committee.
Among the developments: Todd Sax, deputy director of site mitigation and restoration at the Department of Toxic Substances Control, said the subsurface reaction causing the landfill’s problems is moving beyond the geosynthetic cover the landfill laid down, and they think it’s possibly doubled in size.
The analysis from state regulators stood in stark contrast Tuesday from the messaging of landfill parent company Waste Connections and Steve Cassulo, the general manager of the landfill.
Cassulo gave the same response multiple times to questions from the committee about the source of data the landfill presented last month with its announcement that its assistance fund was ending. The landfill reported it gave out approximately $25 million in the past 12 months.
Several committee members asked the landfill for more explanation on its data, or if it had separate numbers than everyone else.
“There, we have … first of all, I’m not going to answer any questions about it, just because of the lawsuit with the county,” Cassulo said, referring to a federal effort by Los Angeles County officials to make the landfill pay for its ongoing pollution problems.
Bob Lewis, chair of the committee, said he was just asking for more explanation of the numbers, because the data only addressed a limited sampling and didn’t give much context, describing it as “sparse.”
“All the data is online, you guys have the same information that I have,” Cassulo said.
An air quality official later disputed the veracity of the company’s findings, saying the landfill does have a conflict of interest.
“There was as recently, as I think, last week, at MS-1, which is considered to be a fence-line site, there was an exceedance of the one-hour (reference exposure level) for benzene,” said Andrea Polidori, assistant deputy executive officer of South Coast Air Quality Management District’s Monitoring and Analysis Division, referring to the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment guidelines.
“And another signal is the concentration of methane,” he said, describing the landfill’s pollution problems. “Methane is considered to be basically a surrogate for landfill emissions. So, in February, there were several instances where methane was as high as … about 20 times the background level,” Polidori continued. “Again, I can go on and on and on because, you know, data is what I do for a living. But … the message is that, again, what comes to mind is that this chart is biased.”
A South Coast AQMD official later announced the agency would be holding a hearing next month in which public testimony and further orders were expected to be considered.
And, there was more potential bad news Tuesday.
Sax said yes, when asked point-blank by a committee member if state officials were working on a potential scenario in which the landfill just decides to “cut and run” on its problems in Castaic.
When pressed for a worst-case scenario for the site in light of the reaction’s growth, Wes Mindermann, supervising engineer for CalRecycle, the statewide agency in charge of landfills, described the landfill’s layout.
“This landfill has three basic waste-management units. There’s what they call the old canyon fill, the canyon B, and then the main canyon fill,” he said, describing the other two areas as older parts that are physically separated from the main canyon fill, which is about 140 to 160 acres in size, compared to the entire 640-acre facility.
“I mean, if you’re asking worst-case scenarios, and I really don’t like to talk about them,” Mindermann said, “but you know, conceivably, you know, the reaction could consume the entire main canyon fill.”
State of emergency
In light of the developments discussed Tuesday, Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, expressed frustration with county officials Wednesday morning, adding the latest report she received on the size of the reaction has it spreading from 40 acres to a possibility of as many as 90 acres.
The landfill also is producing roughly 1.5 million gallons of leachate per week, a potentially toxic chemical that has to be treated on site before it can be trucked for disposal.
One of the main concerns that came out during the discussion is that L.A. County has been relying on Chiquita Canyon Landfill to compensate residents for the landfill’s impacts, and as of last month, the landfill said it had no more need to do so.
Lewis brought up during the discussion that there’s no mandate, mechanism or stipulation in the landfill’s permit that requires it to pay anything, which was a concern. The landfill announced it was shutting down Dec. 31, after a legal fight to stay open.
At one point, a terse exchange took place Tuesday between Schiavo and Stephanie English, a representative of L.A. County 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger, after English said the state could issue a unilateral declaration for a state of emergency on behalf of the county.
Schiavo criticized the county’s reaction to the crisis on Wednesday.
“You can’t convince anyone in that room, anyone in that Zoom meeting, that more resources would not come if we had a state of emergency,” Schiavo said Wednesday.
“Everyone needs to do more at all levels of government. It’s our jobs as elected leaders to fight for more support and resources for our community. It won’t solve everything, but there are so many things that can be available when you have a state of emergency,” Schiavo said,
“and for them to not pull that trigger at this point when (the reaction area) has more than doubled in size and it is clearly out of control, is negligent. I hope the county and state will now reconsider with this new information before us. And I will again request the state act.”
English said the county is seeking to force Chiquita Canyon Landfill to pay for the services it’s no longer providing with a court order, and she reiterated the county’s stance that officials would reconsider the request if there was significant change in the situation.
“As part of the lawsuit, the county is asking the court to establish a fund to help residents with the odors coming from the landfill, and to establish a relocation program or a home-hardening program with those funds coming from the landfill,” English said.
She was unable to give any timeline for when any financial help from that action might be available to residents, and said it depended on the county being successful in court, so it was a “wait-and-see” situation and likely subject to a lengthy court process.
“And you know, unfortunately, those are typically long processes where there’s argument back and forth,” English said, “and discovery back and forth, and it takes a while for that to resolve itself, for the court to make a decision, I wouldn’t even begin to speculate.”
English also said the county should soon have the results it’s waiting for from a cancer-cluster study requested by Barger in October.
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Barger was not immediately available to provide comment on whether a state of emergency request, which also was renewed by the Castaic Area Town Council last month, would be reconsidered by the county.
Schiavo shared a link Wednesday on where residents can go to submit a letter to the state regarding the problems with Chiquita Canyon, which she said would be helpful in several legislative efforts she has in progress: calegislation.lc.ca.gov/Advocates.
On Tuesday, state regulators with the multi-agency critical action team, or MCAT, that’s been working on the landfill’s problems, indicated they are still figuring out its next steps.
