While the legal system continues to delay relief to Chiquita Canyon Landfill’s neighbors, who may have to deal with an environmental crisis there for decades, federal regulators are once again asking for public comment on something intended to lessen the smell.
The Department of Toxic Substances Control is looking to take action to “reduce gas and odor emissions from the landfill,” according to a recent mailer that circulated in the community, saying the department is seeking public comment until Aug. 19.
“The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) is hereby requesting public comments about placing a cover over the waste at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill located at 29201 Henry Mayo Drive,” according to the notice. “This proposal is outlined in the draft Removal Action Workplan (RAW).”
Gregory Gentile, project manager for the DTSC work, did not respond to a request for comment.
Tens of thousands of complaints have been launched against the landfill, which has been subject to local, state and federal orders to clean up its mess, since it decided to shut down at the end of 2024 due to its problems. The landfill has been plaguing residents since problems were first observed there in 2022.
A fire is burning trash underground there at around 250 degrees, a problem that’s expanding and creating several auxiliary issues: the event is creating enough odorous leachate to overfill two Olympic-sized swimming pools every week; the landfill is settling at a rate of more than 9 inches a month’ there’s no way to put out the fire, which could burn for at least the next 10 years by experts’ estimates; and the smells from the “elevated temperature event” are related to a number of health claims the landfill is fighting in federal and appellate courts.
Chiquita Canyon Landfill did not respond to a request for comment through spokesman John Musella.
L.A. County 5th District Supervisor Kathyn Barger issued a statement at a community advisory meeting for the landfill in July, after a federal judge denied an order sought by the county for Chiquita.
L.A. County asked the judge to order “relocation or home hardening for those household most impacted – specifically relocation or home hardening for 938 households and home hardening for additional impacted households,” which was denied. The judge found the county’s order was not “narrowly tailored” to the landfill’s alleged victims.
“While I am disappointed by the ruling, I remain steady in my commitment to the residents who’ve endured the ongoing impacts of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. This decision does not end our fight. We will continue pursuing every available legal avenue to secure meaningful relief and hold those responsible accountable,” Barger’s statement said.
The latest action “allows DTSC to require cover installation on the full main canyon and to require funds be available to maintain the cover,” according to the letter. The fire expanding to fill the canyon was one of the early “worst-case” scenarios discussed by regulators during early meetings about the crisis at Chiquita Canyon Landfill.
The original underground fire was reported by Waste Connections, Chiquita Cayon Landfill’s parent company, as being 28 acres. CalRecycle, the state’s leading agency for waste management, released an analysis in March 2025 that stated the fire had grown to 98 acres. Regulators have discussed the need for reaction breaks to keep the landfill’s reaction to a 160-acre main fill area, which now appears to be a concern.
The DTSC is hopeful the new work will help reduce the smell, but regulators thus far haven’t been able to show that covering things up will do anything to stop the smoldering pyre underground.
The current work order is related to an “Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Determination and Order” that the DTSC issued in April 2025. However, the orders to cover the landfill have been in place for more than two years, while investigators have worked to figure out both the cause and how to stop the subsurface event.
A root-cause analysis has never determined the actual cause of the fire at Chiquita, but the 2025 CalRecycle report suggests the possibility of a “doom loop” situation under the surface based on its study of similar incidents. The facility’s gas wells, which turn the methane naturally produced at the landfill into energy, were suspected as a factor.
“A (subsurface elevated temperature) event can result from a combination of reactions. For example, reactive industrial waste (e.g., aluminum dross, baghouse dust, salt cake, fly ash, incinerator ash, or other metal oxide waste) can generate sufficient heat to pyrolyze or ignite surrounding municipal solid waste (MSW) and cause high gas pressures at temperatures exceeding 212 (degrees). A SET event can also be caused by aggressively overpulling a gas collection and control system (GCCS) to address emissions and/or odors,” according to a CalRecycle report on the landfill, which also calls some of the landfill’s claims about the situation “not reasonable.”
“This ‘doom loop’ occurs when the operator attempts to correct one adverse condition by increasing the vacuum in the adjacent wells, which causes negative events,” according to the report. A landfill expert previously described the gas-extraction wells as acting like “bellows” that end up pushing oxygen into the vacuum, which worsens the event.
Residents are now seeking relief from the courts after the landfill stopped providing a temporary relocation fund that L.A. County officials ordered.
The fund went away in March 2025, but the county has been locked in a lawsuit with Chiquita since the December prior.
The most recent action was the appellate court rejecting an appeal from the landfill’s attorneys, who challenged a meet-and-confer order so both sides could discuss the parameters of a new relocation fund.
That challenge created a monthslong delay in any actual progress for discussion of the fund, which is now headed back to the original court that made the order.
There are also thousands of residents suing the landfill, alleging a range of health impacts from persistent bloody noses to cancer.
Richard Humanic, a resident who lives near Live Oak Elementary School in Castaic, stopped by The Signal on Wednesday to share his frustration with local government’s response to the incident, as well as the multiagency task force that’s supposed to be protecting residents from such harm.
“All they do is more talk and more talk. It keeps rolling and rolling, and we do not see any change,” he said Wednesday. “Nothing has improved.”
