Chiquita Canyon Landfill is seeking $9.5 million from Los Angeles County, claiming county officials “prejudicially abused their discretion” by refusing to give Chiquita Canyon its money back, which the landfill was charged for an expansion it couldn’t complete.
After granting the landfill permission to expand through a conditional use permit, both L.A. County and the Regional Water Quality Control Board “took actions that individually forced Chiquita to close” on Jan. 1, according to the landfill’s lawyers.
A spokesman for Chiquita Canyon said Monday the landfill does not comment on pending litigation.
“I’m aware Chiquita Canyon Landfill’s proprietors have filed a lawsuit. The county will review the case and respond through the proper legal channels,” according to a statement from L.A. County 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger, in an email Monday afternoon from Helen Chavez Garcia, her director of communications. Chavez Garcia also said a representative from the county counsel’s office indicated they received the lawsuit Monday. The action was initially filed by Chiquita’s lawyers on Sept. 5.
The landfill was charged $11.6 million in “bridge and thoroughfare fees” for an approved 2004 expansion request, according to Chiquita. The county issued the permits in 2017. A government agency typically charges such fees to offset its infrastructure costs for a development or a project, which are typically assessed per unit or per acre on a plan.
Chiquita Canyon Landfill’s attorneys argued that the $11.6 million it was charged was based on the 155.7 acres the 640-acre facility was hoping to add for waste collection.
The landfill was able to expand by just under 27 acres, according to its complaint against the county, and as a result the lawsuit argues the fee collection for 128.8 acres, just over $9.5 million, was unlawful.
“Under California law, the Los Angeles County Code, and the text of (Chiquita’s permit), the B&T fee may be imposed only on new development projects expected to require new public infrastructure improvements,” which has been identified by the county in a 2011 report, according to Chiquita’s complaint.
“So far as (county officials) have disclosed to (Chiquita), the county has not expended any funds for public infrastructure for the 128.8 acres that were not used by Chiquita, and never will,” according to Chiquita’s argument.
“The Regional Water Board forced the landfill’s closure by denying Chiquita approvals it needed to further develop the landfill,” according to the complaint. “The county separately forced the landfill’s closure because, despite having agreed to exercise its best efforts to process a permit modification that would allow Chiquita to accept a commercially reasonable amount of waste at the landfill, the county did not approve the agreed-upon permit modification before a sharp tonnage reduction went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.”
Chiquita claims it was ordered to pay more than $300 million in fees for that expansion, which it states is part of a separate, ongoing appeal. Chiquita also claims in its lawsuit that, despite the company filing Public Records Act requests, the county has yet to produce any improvements constructed from those fees.
L.A. County officials have not yet filed any response to Chiquita’s arguments as of Monday.
While Chiquita Canyon claims to have accepted as much as one-fifth of the entire county’s municipal solid waste at landfills, there have been growing problems for years.
In response to a community outcry, L.A. County officials acknowledged more than two years ago that the county did not have sufficient resources to police the facility’s problems.
Those problems include: the production of an overwhelming amount of leachate, a nauseating chemical byproduct of landfills; the underground combustion of trash at approximately 250 degrees, which also creates excessive and nauseating landfill gases, and is expanding, according to regulators; and a sinking issue.
One of the most troubling aspects of the landfill’s problems, according to hours of complaints discussed at public meetings, has been the lack of understanding of what is going on. Despite years of work from a task force of county, state and federal officials, there’s been no explanation for the cause and no estimate for when the problems might go away.
