The Brief

Air quality officials have ordered the Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic to find ways to reduce the odors that residents have been complaining about for years.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has been fielding thousands of complaints about odors that an air quality inspector described as a “sour milk rotting,” “sweet rotting fruit,” and “rotten egg." And after a lengthy hearing on Wednesday, the AQMD ordered the landfill's operator, Waste Connections, to mitigate the stench.

Who is affected?

Those living in the cities of Val Verde, Castaic, Live Oak and Hasley Canyon have been inundating the South Coast Air Quality Management District with a barrage of complaints.

According to Laurance Israel, a supervising air quality inspector with AQMD, since May the agency has received more than 2,100 complaints that have resulted in 58 notices of violation against the landfill.

What is causing the stench 

The odors are the result of elevated levels of sulfur, specifically dimethyl sulfide and some leachate, a term for water that has passed through solid waste leaching out chemicals. And following the complaints and notices of violation, the AQMD issued an “Order of Abatement” — like a sanction — against the Chiquita Canyon landfill, triggering a hearing.

After eight hours of public testimony and expert analysis at the hearing on Wednesday, the AQMD ordered Chiquita Canyon landfill, run by Waste Connections, to take immediate steps to mitigate the stench. That includes installing an “impermeable” cover over the area that is emitting the excess gas.

However, the AQMD and the landfill do not have "precise answers as to how to end this reaction,” said Kathryn Roberts, an attorney for AQMD. Instead, the AQMD has ordered Chiquita Canyon landfill to form a committee of "subject matter experts” to ultimately propose “a final solution that will end the landfill reaction and the ongoing public nuisance,” Roberts said.

About the rare reaction creating the odor

Robert Dick, a senior vice president at SCS Engineers who will serve on this committee, spoke at Wednesday’s hearing. He said the odors are a result of a rare, adverse reaction in an old area of the landfill.

Typically, microbes eat waste and the waste then decomposes at a slow and steady pace. However, in an elevated temperature landfill — at a temperature of 170 degrees Fahrenheit or higher — microbes can no longer function properly, resulting in the waste being decomposed at a quicker speed releasing large amounts of heat, liquid and landfill gas.

In his testimony, Dick said that while on the committee, he would review gas temperature data, leachate composition data and “a host of other scientific data that'll be provided to me,” to determine the cause of the elevated temperatures.

However, he also made clear that, “we may not arrive at a definitive answer to what was the cause for the heat to initiate in this facility.”

To minimize the release of the odors, Dick would work with the facility on heat collection and liquid collection methods.

The backstory

Residents have long raised a stink about the landfill. The 639-acre landfill opened in 1972 and in 1997, the Val Verde Civic Association reached an agreement with the former owner to close the landfill in 2019, or when it reached 23 million tons of garbage. But when Chiquita Canyon reached that limit in 2016, Los Angeles County officials extended operations by a year.

Then in 2017, the current owners sought a new 30-year permit in 2017. Under this agreement, the landfill could potentially hold 61 million more tons of trash.

And some members of the public speaking about the odors at yesterday’s hearing blamed the ongoing issues on the landfill expansion.

“There's been what I would consider a(n) environmental disaster that we are dealing with, where we cannot open our windows,” said Val Verde resident Cody Clark. “We go outside and we are hit by toxic fumes and gases outside of our house. And we are having health problems every day.”

Other residents complained of coughing, burning eyes, dry throats and aggravated asthma.

What's next

Tasked with understanding the health consequences of the odors is Pablo Sanchez Soria, a toxicologist with CTEH, an environmental consulting firm.

The gas is produced in the body, he said during his testimony, and is a food additive. Exposure to the gas can result in headaches, nausea and vomiting. Sanchez Soria will prepare a report outlining the health risks from acute and long-term exposure to dimethyl sulfide.

The report will be released on Jan. 15, 2024, and include steps public health officials can take.

Geffen Playhouse Artistic Director Tarell Alvin McCraney won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the movie Moonlight, but don't expect to see him at this year's Oscars ceremony.

"I tend to stay away from the awards show," McCraney said. " I think I might have PTSD."

McCraney is referring to the viral moment from the 2017 Oscars ceremony, where La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner instead of Moonlight.

McCraney isn't new to theater. In fact, you could consider it his original home before his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue launched him into the Hollywood spotlight. But when the Geffen Playhouse asked him to be their artistic director two years ago, it called him back to the stage in a different way. Tapping a screenwriter for the position was a first for the theater, but McCraney said the roles actually overlap in more ways than one.

 "The job of the screenwriter most times is to make sure that everybody is understanding where the story is going and what the 'action' of the piece is," McCraney said. "So it's not that much different than being an artistic director.  My job here is to set the artistic goal for the organization. [To] point out its virtues and pitfalls, the dangers and the obstacles, and then move collectively as a single storyteller towards that goal."

McCraney said one of the great things about living in Los Angeles is its nuanced racial and ethnic communities, and he rides his bike around the city to better experience them.

"The landscape is constantly shifting and changing," McCraney said. "For example, Westwood has drastically changed over the past 15 years and will change irrevocably with the coming of the new train station down on Wilshire. It will change again with LA28 happening."

Just like Los Angeles, the Geffen Playhouse has had multiple transformations over its more than 30 year existence. Their world premier show, Silvia Silvia Silvia, is playing until March 8. Dragon Mama, starring Sarah Porkalob, begins March 4.

"Sarah is an incredible singer and writer and has created this incredible arc through a family that is both powerful and witty, but also deeply nuanced," McCraney said. "She's sharing that family with us, and family is our first community. They are the people we learn the most from. We learn unconditional love. We learn collective bargaining. Investigating family, investigating why we stay together and how we stay together through dire circumstances is a critical investigation for us right now."

When it comes to this year's Oscars ceremony, McCraney said he's rooting for all the nominees.

"It's been an incredible season," he said. "But Sinners is an incredible film that I've seen three or four times, so I'm really excited to see how it does."

The Long Beach Community College District has agreed to pay $18 million to more than 1,450 part-time professors to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged they were forced to work unpaid hours outside the classroom, grading papers and tests, meeting with students, preparing lessons and other duties.

The settlement, which the district board quietly approved last month, still needs the judge overseeing the case to sign off. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for July 1 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It’s likely that Judge Stuart Rice will approve the deal. Last year, he ruled that the part-timers, commonly called adjuncts, were entitled to the pay they sought, writing he found “a myriad of problems” with the district’s claims that its practices did not violate state law.

The case has made “a major impact throughout the state already,” as some districts have begun negotiating contract terms to give adjuncts what they’ve long sought — pay for time they spend prepping and grading, not just for class time, said the plaintiffs’ lawyer Eileen B. Goldsmith, in an interview. (EdSource published an investigative series in the issue, Gig By Gig At California’s Community Colleges, in 2022.)

The Long Beach district recently set aside $20 million for the settlement and associated costs, its spokesperson, Stacey Toda, told the Long Beach Post in an email. “Resolving this matter allows the District to avoid prolonged litigation and manage risk responsibly, consistent with standard practices across public higher education,” Toda wrote.

The settlement “is a big deal, it is tremendous,” said John Martin, chair of the California Part-Time Faculty Association, and a community college adjunct professor in Shasta and Butte counties.

Martin, a long-time advocate for better pay for adjuncts, is also the plaintiff in similar ongoing lawsuits, including one against the state Community College system.

In legal papers filed in the Superior Court, Goldsmith wrote that the proposed settlement, if approved, will result in 1,456 class members receiving more than “$11,000 — a very meaningful result for these class members, particularly given the novel issues in this litigation.”

The Long Beach Post contributed to this story.