The Val Verde Civic Association, Citizens for Chiquita Canyon Landfill Compliance, and the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment (SCOPE) filed litigation late last Thursday challenging Los Angeles County Supervisors’ July 25 approval of the landfill’s expansion.
The three groups are demanding the County of Los Angeles keep their promise to the community of Val Verde to close this landfill as was promised in 1997.
The groups’ petition, available at www.vvcivic.com, states among other things that the environmental document: fails to adequately disclose or analyze all of the Project’s potentially significant direct, indirect, cumulative and growth-inducing impacts, including but not limited to impacts on air quality, climate change, biological resources and visual resources; fails to adequately analyze the Project’s potentially significant impacts on minority and/or low income populations; fails to adequately describe the current landfill’s air quality impacts because it relies on monitoring data from monitoring stations that are located too far away from the landfill to be reliable indicators of the landfill’s actual emissions; • fails to adequately analyze the efficacy of proposed mitigation measures, particularly mitigation measures intended to address the Project’s air quality emissions and odor; • fails to adequately describe and analyze the Project’s predictable health impacts; • fails to consider a reasonable range of alternatives.
Background Chiquita Canyon Landfill is located on Highway 126 immediately adjacent to the historic community of Val Verde.
Approximately 500 community members attended the hearing.
School children will be directly impacted by the expansion.
Santa Clarita Valley International Charter School has nearly 1000 students and will be less than a mile from the landfill border.
The Environmental Impact Report found that PM2.5 pollution is a significant umitigatable impact.
“Approving this permit places the 2,500 residents in the community of Val Verde, and perhaps also important, the over 1,500 kids going to the school within two and a half miles from the border in high cancer, chemical and pollutant exposure areas, according to the EIR.3.” Erica Larsen, speaking for Val Verde Civic Association, said: “Residents are furious at the County’s and [landfill operator] Waste Connection’s blatant disregard of the 1997 agreement created during the last Chiquita Canyon Landfill expansion and officials disregard for hundreds of firsthand accounts of health issues.
The County should be held accountable for exploiting the low-income minority community of Val Verde.” “With the approval of this expansion, Chiquita Canyon Landfill will take in as much trash as some of the largest landfills in the United States, making the Santa Clarita Valley a dumping ground for much of the Southland’s trash,” said Lynne Plambeck, SCOPE president.