The following is an open letter to the Santa Clarita City Council.

Honorable Council members,

On Tuesday I testified along with a group of community advocates at the Board of Supervisors on the issue of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill expansion. We implored the board to facilitate a public hearing for the Draft Environmental Impact Report. I feel optimistically that we convinced the supervisors to aid us with our request.

I waited to see if representatives from the city of Santa Clarita would take a day off from work and show up, too.

The request for the hearing was, in my opinion, urgent. If our request is not granted, the Regional Planning Commission hearing will occur after the Final EIR, well after any reasonable window of opportunity to address or correct the egregious environmental justice oversight or the faulty air-quality reporting and analysis that will affect us – all of us. That includes the city of Santa Clarita to a great extent.

When I got home, I reread the city’s comments on the Draft EIR. I realized you might not be aware of how much this issue affects the health and financial interests of your city. If you did, I am sure you would have sent a more detailed response, or perhaps hired a team of land-use attorneys to comment.

Do know Chiquita will be the largest landfill operation in the nation if it is approved?

Do you know Santa Clarita is already crammed between the state’s largest landfills – and that at Chiquita Canyon Landfill’s current size, its operations are responsible for a large portion of the air pollution that you and your residents breathe?

Do you know impacts from increased truck traffic are omitted from consideration in the Air Quality Chapter? (link)

Do you know the Draft EIR grossly under-calculated the truck traffic (link) that will be traveling on the I-5, and that trash hauling itself will cause an increase in pollution – as well as more congestion and a higher likelihood that road accidents and fatalities will occur?

Have you tried to merge onto northbound I-5 from Lyons, Valencia or Magic Mountain only to compete with the big-rigs that are merging in your direction so they can queue up at the weigh station? Do you think the increased highway traffic from landfill trucks will not affect you or your residents?

Do your constituents and business partners know about the massive scope of the landfill expansion?

Why is the city relatively silent?

A common quip aimed in the direction of residents in Val Verde and Southern Castaic goes something like this: “Why did you move there if you knew there was a landfill?”

I would like to pose the same question to the city of Santa Clarita.

Why did the city move so close to Chiquita Canyon Landfill? Didn’t the city know about the landfill and what they were getting into?

It may surprise you that the closest buildings to the expansion border are not in Val Verde, but in Valencia, to be exact. If you factor in the Newhall Ranch project, those homes will be located so close to the landfill that it violates Title 26 of Los Angeles County Code 110.3 of the Building Code (link). Seriously.

From Newhall Ranch’s website (link):

“Newhall Ranch is a new home community nearly 15 years in the planning. Taking place just west of Valencia in Santa Clarita, California, the Newhall Ranch community will be an ideal place for families, friends, and the future.”

Business owners in the Valencia Commerce Center will be required by the County (link) to pay for costly methane mitigation (link) if they want to continue doing business in your city. The mitigation costs will come out of their own pockets.

Will you tell CA Rasmussen, Nature Made Vitamins and The Newhall Land and Farming Co. that they will be required to spend their own money to do business because their neighbor, the largest landfill operation in the United States, has grown to unmanageable proportions?

When will you take a stand on behalf of your residents and your investors?

For just a moment, did you forget about the landfill-Val Verde contract to close in 2019 or when the current conditional use permit (link) intake reaches 23 million tons? Did you know the landfill holds those conditions of the contract with the county? The Val Verde-landfill contract is an integral part of the current CUP. It is reiterated as a separate item. Best estimates from tonnage reports indicate that the landfill has a year or so left on its contract. Perhaps this is the reason the landfill is trying to push the expansion through quickly.

This is a no-brainer. If an expansion is granted, the county and the landfill will be violating their own contract.

This expansion proposal serves the petitioner. It does not serve you, your city, nor your constituents. Please take a closer look at the EIR and add your voice to the call for a Draft EIR hearing.

Sara Sage is a Val Verde resident.

Some of the businesses in the Valencia Commerce Center that will be most affected if the landfill expands.

The U.S. Post Office’s property line lies adjacent to the landfill’s property.

A Google overlay of the landfill expansion boundaries to reflect its approximate proximity to businesses in the Valencia Commerce Center. Buildings highlighted in pink are likely to be subject to methane mitigation measures at their own cost, using the 1,000 foot standard from the County of Los Angeles.

A Google overlays of the landfill expansion boundaries to reflect its approximate proximity to homes in the Newhall Ranch project. Buildings highlighted in pink are likely to be subject to methane mitigation measures at their own cost, using the 1,000 foot standard from the County of Los Angeles.