“You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.”

For those of you who think what I’m writing is totally fabricated, might I recommend you read through the following?

A) 2013 Annual Groundwater Monitoring report for Chiquita Canyon Landfill.

B) California Regional Water Quality Control Board Order 98-086 – Water Discharge Requirements for Chiquita Canyon Landfill.

Now the first is about what type of stuff has been found in the monitoring well samples, while the second is the permit for the dump and what is allowed to be dumped there.

So if I look at the first – what has been found – and then look at the second – what is allowed to be dumped there – I find some serious problems.

There isn’t supposed to be any hazardous waste such as herbicides, refrigerants, cleaning compounds, degreasing compounds or just about any other chemical you can think of. But – the reports shows that all kinds of those nasty things have been found.

And then we listen to the company. “We operate in the safest manner possible.”

In review of the operations at Sunshine Canyon Landfill just south of our little valley, we see that the smells and chemical problems have been stopped by an active active and thus responsive Community Advisory Committee. Its members told the dump to do things right or stop taking in trash. The problems were fixed.

So the samples were taken at Chiquita Canyon, and what has been done? I’m still looking for that answer.

I do know that 2,732,654 gallons of leachate were collected from the installed system to collect it. It appears to be operating correctly, except how much has penetrated into the ground under the collection system? Leachate is the liquid collected from under the piles of trash and dirt of the landfill.

Some of the leachate is usable on-site to stop dust and help compact the soil covering the stuffed being dumped. Leachate found to be contaminated with stuff that should be dumped at Chiquita Canyon should have been trucked to a treatment site up Interstate 5 to Buttonwillow, where the treatment facility is located. I don’t know how much or how little was transported.

What we do know is that there were some chemicals that are hazardous that were dumped in Chiquita Canyon Landfill. We also know those chemicals can cause many of the problems reported by the residents of Val Verde.

As has been stated so well before – and the state’s reports are facts that can’t be disputed – only about 20 percent of the trash coming into the dump emanates from the SCV. The rest of the stuff comes from Santa Monica and Anaheim, in large part. Yes, we’re getting a lot of trash from the town that Disney built. So if it needs to be expanded, how about those towns finding another sucker to take the trash? The SCV does not need any more.

But very soon, some highly toxic stuff could be coming to the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. Some of us remember the loud rumbles and bright glow in the Western sky many years ago. It was the rocket test facility operated by North American-Rocketdyne and is now part of NASA.

NASA called the facility “excess” and shut it down. They got out all of the dangerous stuff, meaning the explosives, but the toxic stuff is waiting to be removed from the soil and water.

Guess the place that is at the top of the list for all of that toxic mess? Yep, you guessed it. The Chiquita Canyon Landfill is at the top of that list.

Is that really why they want to expand? Some nice big and fat federal dollars for a huge federal contract? We have the documentation on that, too, if you’d like to see it. It is public record.

There is another disturbing little fact for the detractors of what I’ve been writing. I’m not getting paid to do any of this. My only connection to Val Verde is a long-ago kindness done by that community for my mother.

Another little fact is that SCVNews.com is not subsidized by any government agency. And guess what else? The guy who edits what I write makes as much as I do for this work.

How anyone could support the expansion of this dump that is unneeded and indeed appears to violate some water quality control standards, and standards for odor control, is beyond me.

During the 1997 campaign by Chiquita Canyon Landfill to increase the size of the dump, they promised the community of Val Verde and Los Angeles County that it was the last expansion request we would ever see. Call this what you will; they are not living up to that promise, and there is little if any chance they will live up to any other.

Can it be any more plain than that?

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].