Chiquita Canyon Landfill has been ordered to cover its entire landfill by the end of August to stop odors from spreading into nearby communities, after an appeal filed by the landfill’s owner was denied.
According to a news release from the L.A. County Department of Public Health, in a 3-0 decision by the L.A. County Solid Waste Facilities Hearing Board, the board denied the landfill’s appeal of a compliance order issued by the L.A. County Public Health’s Solid Waste Management Program issued on May 1 last year.
L.A. County Public Health is acting as the local enforcement agency on behalf of CalRecycle, which manages the state’s recycling and waste management programs.
The compliance order required Chiquita to install a geomembrane cover — a material used to contain liquids or gases to prevent seepage — to cover all areas of the site “that are not currently covered by a geomembrane and to which the reaction area has expanded or has the potential to expand,” according to the May order.
That reaction area refers to a 60-plus-acre underground fire at the landfill that started in early 2022. The fire is producing gases and more than a million gallons of leachate each week, which environmental regulators have said could last another 10 to 20 years.
The directive requires that the landfill will install the geomembrane cover over the entire landfill by Aug. 31 this year, the release said.
John Musella, a spokesperson for Chiquita, wasn’t immediately reachable as of the publication of this story.
During the hearing’s closing remarks on April 28, Chiquita’s legal counsel argued the geomembrane cover order is unnecessary — even counterproductive — and alleged that L.A. County Public Health was pursuing the cover restriction based on speculation, not hard facts, about the reaction area expanding.
L.A. County Public Health’s lawyers contended their expert witnesses had conclusively proven the reaction area is expanding, and that the LEA is obligated to intervene.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District has collected tens of thousands of complaints from residents who live close to the landfill about its impact on their health and quality of life.
According to the results of an L.A. County Public Health-run survey released in January, in which more than 1,500 responses were collected from residents near the landfill about its impact on their daily lives, hundreds said one of the most significant impacts was the landfill’s smell.
But odors are just one of the environmental hazards regulators have identified as a threat to human health emanating from the landfill.
When regulators from the Environmental Protection Agency visited the landfill on March 5, they observed failures and sites for potential failure in the landfill’s ability to contain leachate, or liquid runoff created when water or other fluids percolate through the landfill’s solid waste.
During the visit, the EPA identified a potential slope failure at one end of the landfill, and a breach where leachate had seeped beneath the geomembrane cover, where the welding between the landfill’s bottom liner and the geomembrane cover had failed, according to orders issued by the agency on March 17.
