As Los Angeles County Counsel worked with Chiquita Canyon Landfill to defend against a lawsuit from residents trying to close the facility, state regulators Wednesday shared residents’ ongoing concerns with statements criticizing the inadequacy of the landfill’s response.  The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board once again denied Chiquita Canyon permission to expand into an additional cell at the facility in a letter also dated Wednesday.  In response to a request for comments about the letter, CalRecycle, the state agency in charge of waste management, said it was working with L.A. County on potential alternative waste-disposal sites, which county officials confirmed Wednesday.  Frustration outside the Downtown Los Angeles courthouse in response to the landfill’s lingering problems boiled over to a back-and-forth between county and state officials, with both saying they’re doing everything they can for their constituents.   Residents still have unanswered questions about the health and environmental impacts from the landfill’s ongoing pollution problems, compensation for damages and a persistent smell that garners more than 2,000 complaints monthly.  Landfill lawsuit  A lawyer representing Castaic and Val Verde residents suing L.A. County and Chiquita Canyon Landfill trying to shut down the facility over its nauseating smell was grateful that Judge Stephen Goorvitch is considering the plaintiffs’ arguments.   Goorvitch ruled in June that residents did not have standing to challenge the conditional use permit the county granted the landfill in 2017.   However, Oshea Orchid, a Castaic Area Town Council member and attorney, said Wednesday the judge is considering the evidence from the plaintiffs — that the excavating, drilling, opening up the scrim, and all of the other work to deal with the landfill’s reaction — is causing a community health impact and should be something that’s subject to an environmental review and subject to challenge by the plaintiffs.  Environmental regulators and landfill officials have said the smells and problems with the landfill will be worse while the work is being completed.  A court clerk for Goorvitch confirmed he has the case under submission and there’s no upcoming hearing scheduled ahead of his anticipated ruling.  A statement from Chiquita Canyon shared via email Wednesday by spokesman John Musella said landfill officials also are “pleased that Judge Goorvitch continues to pay close attention to the issues related to this case.”  Lingering problems   The smells from Chiquita Canyon Landfill have spread past Castaic and neighboring Val Verde and into newer housing developments surrounding Valencia on the west side of the Santa Clarita Valley, according to residents’ complaints.   South Coast Air Quality Management District officials said they receive thousands of complaints generated each month by the odors at the landfill, the exact cause of which is still to be determined, which was part of the State Water Boards’ concerns.  The smoldering, subsurface reaction is still taking place at more than 240 degrees, which is primarily causing two problems: an overwhelming amount of nauseating landfill gases and a production of leachate exceeding a million gallons per month, which is well above normal levels.  These problems are also creating land-settlement issues at the facility, and on top of that, the latest letter states officials’ concerns for a potential seismic event to create a crisis that could significantly threaten the landfill’s stability.  There has been no publicly shared plan or stated intention to shut down the landfill, but there has been a discussion of alternative sites if there happens to be a capacity issue or intake is stopped at the landfill.  “CalRecycle has worked with the Los Angeles County Local Enforcement Agency and the  L.A. County Department of Public Works to identify alternate landfills with capacity to accept additional waste in the event the Chiquita Canyon Landfill is unable to accept new incoming waste,” according to a statement released Wednesday by the agency. “The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works has developed a fact sheet that identifies these alternate facilities. CalRecycle is prepared to assist and will continue to provide information to local agencies.”  The list of alternate sites identified was not made immediately available Wednesday.   Expansion denied   The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board sent a letter dated Wednesday to the landfill’s leadership upholding its denial in March of a plan by the landfill to expand its operations. The landfill had sent a response in June that prompted the latest missive sent on the State Water Boards’ letterhead:  “Neither the initial response nor the revised master plan include an adequate approach to contain the subsurface smoldering reaction,” the water board letter said. “In particular, Chiquita’s response did not contain an adequate plan to stop the reaction from expanding and its updated analysis still contained uncertainty regarding the impact of the reaction on slope stability in the cell proposed for development.”  Landfill officials did not respond to questions about its potential capacity after the latest denials.  “As a critical part of the county’s solid waste disposal systems, Chiquita is actively evaluating today’s letter from the Regional Water Quality Control Board and … working cooperatively with them and our regulators to address their issues,” said a separate statement shared by Musella.  The statement also said agencies have concurred that its trash intake is not impacting the elevated landfill event.  The site also currently holds a tank farm filled with large tanks of the leachate being produced that are only allowed to be stored and treated at the landfill temporarily through an emergency permit with the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.   The State Water Boards’ letter says Chiquita’s assessment would only be accurate “if it can be demonstrated that there is no jeopardy to the integrity of the unit’s foundation or the structures that control leachate, surface drainage, erosion, or gas (i.e., the environmental control systems). “However, due to the ongoing reaction at the landfill, the potential for a large seismic event to jeopardize the integrity of the landfill’s environmental control systems already exists.”  These concerns were noted as recently as last week.   “In a letter dated Sept. 17, 2024, the (local enforcement agency) reported that the western slope toe of the landfill moved twice within a year due to the reaction, which threatened the integrity of the landfill’s leachate and surface drainage systems and possibly the bottom liner system,“ according to the letter. “Given the heavy reliance on existing environmental control systems to contain landfill gases and extract leachate from the reaction mass, as well as the fact that these are the principal systems for mitigating the reaction, the integrity of these systems under both static and dynamic conditions is paramount.”  Fifth District L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger praised the state’s help in making the facility safe in a statement Wednesday responding to the State Water Board’s move:  “I applaud the State Water Board’s decision to dutifully exercise its regulatory authority and powers related to the safe operation of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. This decision by the Water Board is an example of how the regulatory structure in place under the Multi-Agency Critical Action Team headed by the U.S. EPA can work to ensure the appropriate regulation of the Landfill.”  County, state dispute  Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, called the situation “desperate” for residents outside the courthouse Wednesday, urging the county to act on the previously requested state of emergency declaration.   “It’s unfortunate that it has come to this — where families in our community are so desperate for action, they are forced to take the extreme measure of suing their local government to try to force Los Angeles County to protect them from the noxious and harmful fumes coming from Chiquita Canyon Landfill,” Schiavo wrote in a statement shared Wednesday via email.  Kevin McGowan, director of the county’s Office of Emergency Services, said Schiavo’s statements relied on some assumptions that just weren’t true and other misunderstandings.   He reiterated that the county has been engaged on the issue since June 2023, when Barger first began bringing attention to it following residents bringing their concerns to her.  One of the commonly cited concerns is that the county is letting Chiquita Canyon handle all the reimbursements for affected residents and not offering any transparency to residents with its process — at least in part due to pending litigation between residents and the landfill.  McGowan said the state has indicated it doesn’t have relocation funds available, and the situation doesn’t meet the federal threshold for relocation damages.   He said the governor had the unilateral ability to declare an emergency, but as the county’s point person for disasters, all the communication he’s received to date is that such a move isn’t necessary based on his conversations with the state’s Office of Emergency Services. The governor’s office has previously referred comment on a potential declaration to CalOES.   In a conference call with Public Works and Barger’s communications office, officials said they could not think of a potential benefit for a declaration. Schiavo said she could not accept that line of thinking when people’s health was in question, adding if there’s no harm in making a declaration, why not try and see what it could bring.  She also shared a fact sheet about the normal procedure for the state declaring an emergency, which is a process that relies on a cooperating agreement with the local county affected and information gleaned from the local emergency-declaration process.  Schiavo said that, in previous conversation with Barger, a comprehensive study of the potential health issues is something that’s been missing, and that’s one possible way that residents could be helped with a declaration.   The landfill has paid consultants for a pair of reports that have so far found no potential long-term health impacts but there has been little independent study of the potential health impacts from county Public Health. The preliminary report the county released in February failed to look at the effects of leachate, as the impacts of the chemical pollution were not fully realized at the time of the Public Health study.  The post Chiquita Canyon faces growing concerns   appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.