California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a lawsuit Tuesday filed in federal court seeking “environmental accountability” over years of violations from Chiquita Canyon Landfill, he announced in a news conference Tuesday.
The announcement Tuesday, made alongside California Department of Toxic Substances Control officials inside the Department of Justice’s Ronald Reagan Building in Downtown Los Angeles, marks the latest chapter in yearslong problems at Waste Connections’ troubled Castaic facility, which has been closed for operations since January 2025.
“Time and again, the owners and operators have failed to manage that waste the way the law requires,” Bonta said. “That’s why today, alongside DTSC, my office is suing Waste Connections and other owners and operators of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill for repeatedly breaking California hazardous waste laws and polluting our natural resources.”
The landfill has been closed for nearly two years, but the problems haven’t subsided.
Chiquita Canyon Landfill, a 639-acre facility off Highway 126, has been at the center of a public health and environmental crisis since an underground chemical reaction, known as an elevated temperature landfill event, began in early 2022.
The underground “elevated temperature event,” which is smoldering dozens of feet underground at around 245 degrees, started in early 2022, and is now estimated to have grown to about 90 acres in size.
The reaction produced odors that drew complaints quickly.
By August 2023, Castaic and Val Verde residents had filed 1,092 odor complaints with the South Coast Air Quality Management District since January of that year.
By spring 2025, the reaction had generated more than 27,000 complaints to the district. Residents in Val Verde and Castaic have reported health symptoms they blame on the reaction, including chronic nosebleeds, migraines, tremors, vision loss, brain fog and breathing problems and even higher incidents of birth issues, according to Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth.
Bonta said Schiavo is the person who reached out to his office to initiate the lawsuit. She stood on stage Tuesday alongside the attorney general.
“Waste Connections is a huge waste company that does this for their job. Right? They know how to do this correctly, and they’re not,” Schiavo said. “And the real effects of that mean that this toxic, garbage leachate liquid is going into our land, into our rivers and into the air where neighbors like Jennifer (Elkins) and her family are getting sick and suffering because of it.”
Elkins, a neighbor of the landfill, has testified numerous times about the health challenges the landfill has created for her and her family.
Tuesday marks the latest in a slew of lawsuits.
In December 2024, L.A. County officials sued Chiquita Canyon and Waste Connections U.S. Inc. in federal court.
Two months after successfully defending a residents’ lawsuit seeking its closure, the landfill announced by email on New Year’s Eve 2024 that it would stop accepting waste the next day. The closure did not end the problem; by March 2025, officials told residents the subsurface reaction was growing.
The landfill and Waste Connections said conditions were improving in February 2025, and ended a resident assistance program that had paid out about $25 million over the previous year. State officials disagreed with the decision.
Enforcement continued into 2026.
In January, DTSC told the landfill it faces daily fines until it submits an adequate plan to address threats to public health and the environment. A county Public Health survey that drew more than 1,500 responses found 681 residents, about 45%, experience the odor daily.
In May, the county’s Solid Waste Facilities Hearing Board denied the landfill’s appeal, upholding an order to cover the entire site with geomembrane by the end of August.
In July, Schiavo and Supervisor Kathryn Barger both called on the landfill to do more to protect residents, while Chiquita Canyon continued work on its west end to contain the event. The reaction is expected to continue for as long as 20 years.
In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign the Landfill Safety Act, which was authored by Schiavo and creates a statewide framework for responding to elevated temperatures at landfills and allow penalties of up to $100,000 per day for noncompliance, directed into a community fund for people harmed by landfill events.
