L.A. County Public Health officials have shared the results from more than 1,500 responses to their survey about the environmental disaster at Chiquita Canyon Landfill and how it’s impacting Santa Clarita Valley residents.
A state agency also told Chiquita Canyon on Monday the landfill faces daily fines until “they provide an adequate plan to address ongoing threats to public health and the environment,” according to a Department of Toxic Substances Control statement.
For more than three years, a fire burning dozens of feet below the surface has burned trash at about 240 degrees, creating overwhelming odors from landfill gases, more than a million gallons of leachate weekly and additional impacts that are still being studied and expected to continue for decades.
At the Jan. 21 Castaic Area Town Council meeting, Azar Kattan, the county’s deputy director of public health, said officials have been working since 2024 to understand the impacts on residents’ health. She described the feedback collected over time as “very consistent.”
“We know that the symptoms are real, that the smell from hydrogen sulfide, which is like rotten eggs, can be detected at low levels, even if the air monitor readings are not exceeding the (recommended exposure limits),” she said.
Council member Abigail DeSesa shared some of her frustration with Kattan, in response to a statement by the health official that most of the results came in early, and then began to taper off.
DeSesa, who represents Val Verde, in close proximity to the landfill, said the results tapered off because the outreach was ineffective and many didn’t know the survey was still open in January, “and then, I’m gonna be really blunt here, the other reason is because nobody thought anything happened anyways, so why bother. And I’m one of those people.”
DeSesa, one of the landfill’s more outspoken opponents, called the study “a giant waste of taxpayer money” as someone who lived in one of the most impacted areas, mentioning concerns she had with how the data was gathered and presented.
Darcy Stinson, a resident who has taken a second property because he said his home is too impacted by the landfill, shared the same outreach concerns about the survey, saying he didn’t know it was still going around.
Kattan said the survey was originally designed to be a short-term capture and said she wasn’t sure why it was kept up so long. However, she did mention multiple times that throughout the lengthy survey period, the answers remained consistent in terms of how strongly residents were impacted. She said that is information the county is using in its lawsuit against Chiquita Canyon.
L.A. County sued the landfill for financial relief in December, about three months before the landfill cut off help to local residents.
The goal for the survey has been to identify what residents were experiencing, she said, as well as the duration and potential health impacts, adding it was designed to be a “temporary assessment of the health impacts of the landfill’s odors, that will help us guide the work that we do.”
“The point of it wasn’t to show that hundreds or thousands are calling in every single day,” Kattan said. “The point of it was to say, ‘Look, everyone who’s calling in has the same common complaint.’”
Kattan said the county wanted to ask how the landfill was impacting people’s daily lives. Of those surveyed, about 620 respondents, said “a lot.”
About half of respondents described the odors as strong or very strong, she said, with the largest group identifying the smell as most problematic in the morning.
There were 681 residents who said they experience the odor daily, which was about 45% of respondents.
The majority of respondents, 755, complained about headaches, with irritation of the nasal and sinus passageways the second most common symptom, experienced by 675 respondents. More than 560 respondents complained of fatigue and another 530 complained of experiencing light-headedness or dizziness.
There were 505 respondents who complained of a cough and more than 450 said the landfill’s odors caused nausea or stomach pain.
Skin rashes, tremors and chest tightness also were cited by at least 200 people.
Most respondents were over the age of 50, about 57%, with 280 adults aged 34 to 49 completing the survey also, and 126 between the ages of 18 and 24. There were more than two dozen children who completed the survey.
“The survey has been very useful in helping us understand the patterns in the community,” Kattan said, adding the county was planning to take down the website soon, but it still remained up as of the publication of this story.
On Monday, the Department of Toxic Substances Control put Chiquita Canyon officials on notice that the facility could face fines of up to $25,000 per day “until the companies present and implement a plan to address the ongoing threat.”
“Over the past two years, DTSC has cited multiple violations of California’s Hazardous Waste Control Law at Chiquita Canyon Landfill,” according to the DTSC. “At the same time, residents continue to report widespread health symptoms to state officials.”
The latest violations stem from a landfill decision to let a leak of several thousand gallons of leachate evaporate instead of removing it from outside of its containment basin, a decision that resulted in the leachate reaching Castaic Creek, a tributary of the Santa Clara River.
John Musella, spokesman for Chiquita Canyon Landfill, wrote that the facility “has repeatedly sought guidance and assistance from state agencies to permit necessary operations, equipment and infrastructure and to ensure full compliance,” in an email Tuesday on behalf of Waste Connections. “Regulators have too often responded with inflammatory rhetoric, allegations of noncompliance and threats of penalties.”
“We remain disappointed by DTSC’s actions and public statements. Contrary to DTSC’s remarks, the Chiquita Canyon Landfill team is working around the clock to manage the elevated temperature landfill event and to comply with all applicable laws, regulations, permits, and orders. Landfill staff are in daily communication with DTSC and nearly 10 other state and local regulators, participating in multiple weekly meetings and submitting extensive technical reports containing millions of data points.”
The county’s Public Health survey is available here: publichealth.lacounty.gov/eh/cclsurvey.htm.
