I was busy yesterday, what with the press conference for Rep. McKeon to announce the bill he has submitted to create a memorial for the victims of the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster. Shortly after that, I went to City Hall to find out more about the proposed Castaic Wilderness area.

So let me get this straight. We’re working on getting a memorial for the dam and all who suffered through that night in 1928. So just a few hundred yards south of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill, there could be part of a national monument, and that would be followed by a wilderness area to the north.

Gee, I think that is a great place to have a dump – just about right between a national memorial area and a wilderness area, too. All those folks who have collected micro-trash in the California condor lands can have more stuff from the dump. We should even expand it while we’re at it. Not.

I got asked just yesterday if I knew what the trucks would be doing after dark at the dump. The gentleman said they show up about 11:30 at night and leave early in the morning. Another gentleman said he had watched some trucks leave during the early-morning hours. Can any of you find out about this? I thought the dump operated only during daylight hours. Just curious. I’d ask the dump, but they don’t have a record of honesty.

There is yet another meeting of the Castaic Area Town Council at the Castaic Union School District building this evening. At this meeting they will get the formal report on what the CATC Land Use Committee heard last week and didn’t vote on. So I must ask: Is this meeting necessary? Just why is the Castaic Area Town Council voting on this? Oh – money. So it starts at 6:30 tonight. I hope a lot of Val Verde residents show up.

Just what is this meeting about? It isn’t like the whole area doesn’t know how the CATC will vote concerning the dump expansion. The words are, “Like, duh.” Regardless of what the residents of the Castaic area who live in Val Verde want, we do already know the outcome. At least I’m pretty sure.

I’m really tired of this dump stuff, but when, after the last Land Use Committee meeting one of the committee members was heard to say, “We know how this is going to be approved,” I get really angry.

Some of the stuff I’m hearing from the residents of Val Verde is right out of an old-fashioned gangster movie. Folks watching folks at their homes. Other folks being followed and sometimes sitting at the driveway of a resident.

There is something basically wrong with what is going on with the dump when normal, everyday folks are a little bit afraid of what might happen to them. Another case of, “We can’t prove it, but.” None of this happened until the meetings on the expansion started.

True or not, this isn’t how a neighborhood should have to live. Maybe it is because the big neighbor just to the southeast is flexing some muscles, the folks next door are a little uncomfortable. At Castaic Elementary, at least when I was there, that big neighbor would be called a bully.

I’m asking the folks in Castaic and Val Verde to stop letting this company, this dump, divide them. No amount of money is worth the bad feelings, and what seems to be near hatred, coming between residents in the same valley.

All y’all are letting a company that runs a dump run too much in Castaic, Val Verde and even Valencia and other parts of the SCV. Chiquita Canyon Landfill has its benevolent but dirty fingers in the Castaic Area Town Council and, through donations to CalArts, even reaches Valencia.

The rest of us in the SCV are letting that company divide us when more than 80 percent of the trash going there is not from the SCV.

So go to the meeting tonight. See what big money can do. Common sense be damned. The vote is predetermined. All it lacks is the stamp of approval from Chiquita Canyon Landfill. If the Town Council votes to oppose the expansion, I will be amazed. Anyone want to bet?

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].