As the underground fire continues at Chiquita Canyon Landfill, a bill from Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, aimed specifically at preventing a similar situation somewhere else passed its first hearing Monday in front of the Natural Resources Committee.
“This is a disaster and it’s a public health crisis that’s affecting residents within a 5-mile radius or more,” Schiavo said during Monday’s hearing, later calling her bill a “direct response” to the incident. It passed on an 11-3 vote.
The Landfill Safety Act looks to strengthen oversight by requiring landfill operators to: alert nearby residents and local enforcement when subsurface temperatures exceed 146 degrees for over 60 consecutive days; submit a corrective action plan within 14 days of high temperatures; trigger a multi-agency response team if temperatures continue rising, ensuring timely coordination and oversight; face penalties and potential loss of permits for failure to act.
The bill would also create the Landfill Subsurface Fire Mitigation Account so penalty funds can go to support impacted communities for things like relocation, home hardening, and other impacts from burning landfills.
One of the most challenging aspects for residents who have been impacted by the incident is that Chiquita Canyon Landfill and its parent company Waste Connections have cut their support fund for residents at the end of February, claiming that the incident was improving.
About two weeks later, state officials reported the exact opposite is true: The reaction area has doubled in size and ultimately could threaten the entire 160-acre canyon.
Residents living nearby in Val Verde and Castaic have reported deeply concerning health symptoms, including chronic nosebleeds, migraines, tremors, sight loss, brain fog, difficulty breathing and respiratory problems, according to Schiavo.
The landfill’s reaction area has tripled in size despite a task force of county, state and federal officials citing daily efforts for years.
Those efforts have to date failed to identify the root cause of the subsurface reaction, which is causing three significant issues: a settling issue causing the landfill to collapse on itself at a rate of more than one foot per month; the production of leachate greater than 1 millions gallons per month, which is causing storage and treatment challenges; and nauseating odors that have drawn more than 28,000 complaints.
The recent situation has exposed the inadequacy of current regulation in preventing such a disaster, according to the leader of a statewide network of local environmental justice groups who testified at the hearing.
“Clearly whatever we’re doing here isn’t working, or I wouldn’t still be here in front of you after three years of working on this,” said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxins. “We can’t have a situation where we just allow these landfills to catch on fire and then destroy communities. We need to make it difficult: If you decide to let your landfill catch on fire, it’s going to be rough.”
Mark Aprea, a lobbyist for Capital Advocacy speaking in opposition to the bill, said without knowing the cause of the subsurface fire, it’s too early to offer a legislative solution that could raise the cost of waste-collection at hundreds of facilities statewide.
Assemblywoman Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz, who was part of a recent Schiavo-led delegation that recently met with residents at a Val Verde church, said she couldn’t believe what she saw or how it’s been allowed to go on for so long.
“It was devastating to see that,” Pellerin said with her hand over her heart, describing how a young boy’s nose started bleeding right after his mother had talked about all the health impacts their family has experienced from the landfill. She thanked Schiavo for the bill and said there needs to be more done. “And the veteran speaking had the tremors going as well. I witnessed all this for myself and wondered, ‘How can this be, that this has been going on for three years?’”
Assemblyman Stan Ellis, a Bakersfield Republican, called the situation “catastrophic,” adding, “It irritates me that we’re not attacking this.” He said there might be solutions from his experience as an engineer in the oil industry that he hoped to discuss offline.
Ellis also raised a concern that the bill might be onerous on the “good guys,” i.e. the landfills that didn’t have any problems. Schiavo answered by saying landfills already are required to monitor their temperatures, and the additional reporting would only be required in the event of an incident.
In terms of helping residents, state Sen. Suzette Valladares, R-Acton, also called on state officials to help Castaic.
She authored a letter last week calling on Attorney General Rob Bonta to attach the state to the county’s lawsuit against Chiquita on behalf of residents.
Valladares also said in a statement last week she planned to introduce a bill that would exempt impacted residents from paying property taxes.
“I appreciate the advocacy that everyone is doing regarding Chiquita Canyon,” Valladares wrote in a statement sent via Ashley Giovannettone, her communications director. “The impacted community members have been waiting for far too long for meaningful relief.”
