A public hearing on the Partially Recirculated Draft EIR will be held by the County Hearing Examiner today, Thursday, December 15, starting at 6 p.m. at the West Ranch High School theater.

Below are press releases about the hearing from both Chiquita Canyon Landfill and the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment.

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[Chiquita Canyon Landfill] Chiquita Canyon Landfill is calling on the public to hold project opponents accountable for misusing information in the County’s Environmental Impact Report (EIR) in an attempt to deliberately mislead and scare the public.

“This shows a total lack of integrity by landfill opponents by playing on people’s fears and emotions,” said Mike Dean, Vice President for Chiquita Canyon. “By extracting information from the EIR and repackaging it out of context, they are telling only part of the story in an effort to scare the public. They conveniently leave out the fact that the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) established a numeric limit to protect public health and that the County’s EIR analysis shows we’re below that limit. Therefore the project does not pose a significant impact to public health.”

In response, Chiquita Canyon released the following statement late yesterday:

“Chiquita Canyon takes seriously the health and safety of our employees and neighbors. The DEIR included a detailed forensic analysis of all possible impacts to public health using the newest, most stringent standards set by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD). The results conclude that cancer risk/health risk for neighbors, workers and other sensitive receptors fall below the threshold of significance as established by the AQMD.”

The partial recirculation of the Draft EIR includes updates and additional information to the Project Description and analyses of Biological Resources, Air Quality, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change, and Project Alternatives, as well as supplemental information on traffic and visual resources.

A public hearing on the Partially Recirculated Draft EIR will be held by the County Hearing Examiner on Thursday, December 15, starting at 6:00 pm and ending at 8:30 pm at West Ranch High School Theater.

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[SCOPE] The landfill was last expanded in 1997 after an agreement was made with the community that it would be closed after reaching 23 million tons of garbage. But the County obviously never planned to honor their approval requirements, since no closure plan has been developed.

Instead, when the landfill reached the permitted limit earlier this year, the director of Regional Planning granted the landfill operator a 25 percent or 6 million ton expansion without an environmental impact report or community review. How? He claimed it was an emergency! SCOPE joined with the local community to object to this unheard of action at a press conference in front of Demonstrating Against the waiverSupervisor Michael Antonovich’s office. As the landfill approached its permitted tonnage, the County did nothing to abide by its own condition to close the landfill. Instead, a secret emergency waiver was negotiated to give the operator an expansion. Shame on the County for not keeping its promises and for making this grant behind closed doors. How can anyone trust the planning process after such an action? You can read about it and watch the video in the Los Angeles Times here.

The community of Val Verde and all of us in Santa Clarita have been dealing with the ill effects of air pollution generated by Chiquita Canyon Landfill for decades. There are other options. Please attend this hearing and speak your mind.

Please see the interactive cancer map on our facebook page.

You can view the new environmental documents and notices in both English and Spanish here. For more info on how you can help email exec@scope.org.