Just down the asphalt path from the massive closed gates of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill, a few dozen local residents stood beside each other Saturday afternoon in a bid for a morale boost.
Longtime Val Verde resident Bill Monroe, who now lives with his wife Tamara in Lakeview Terrace, announced that he was hosting the prayer circle at the landfill at the last monthly Chiquita Landfill Community Advisory Meeting.
Bill and Tamara are among the hundreds of people who’ve alleged the landfill has given them a string of varied health issues and left them with an unsellable home.
Tamara said about 400 flyers were posted in the Val Verde area, which neighbors the roughly 600-acre landfill, as well as around Live Oak Elementary School, promoting the prayer circle event.
Saturday’s prayer to “heal the land” was inspired by a verse from Book of Chronicles, particularly one phrase: “If my people … turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
“We were frustrated nothing was happening, these endless meetings with lawyers, and AQMD … nothing’s fixing the problem,” Tamara said. “Let’s ask our Val Verde neighbors (to come), and ask God to do it.”
Tamara said that there were roughly 35 people in attendance at the prayer circle itself, while several people passed by on Highway 126 to honk and hold up signs in support of a cadre still fighting for solutions, when it comes to the cascading environmental issues – including an ongoing underground trash fire now about 4 years old – still being litigated among residents, the landfill, L.A. County and state regulators.
Members of the circle took turns praying and commiserating about how the landfill has impacted their quality of life.
Tamara said she’s lucky that she and her husband were able to move away from their Val Verde home about two years ago, despite sorely missing the community, after their family began experiencing symptoms ranging from tremors to headaches. When their grandkids would come to visit, they’d get nosebleeds, Tamara said, and even installing home air filters wasn’t enough to stop them.
“It’s disrupted our whole life. Our kids who were living with us had to find another place to live,” Tamara said.
Abigail Desesa, Val Verde’s representative on the Castaic Town Council, has lived in the area for 27 years. She said that health problems among her fellow residents are widespread, and many, including herself, have too many obligations staked in the Val Verde social ecosystem to leave.
Desesa said that besides serving the Castaic Town Council, she also cares for a friend on hospice in the area.
“I just can’t leave this community, I’m sorry,” Desesa said.
