First a couple of corrections from what I wrote yesterday. The proposed new limits for trash dumping into the Chiquita Canyon Landfill are 6,000 tons per day, versus 3,000 tons now, with weekly limits raised to 60,000 tons from 30,000 tons now. (I initially said per month.) That is equal to setting one USS Iowa Class battleship in that landfill every week.

Note: That class of battleship displaces about 58,000 tons. We won’t quibble over the other 2,000 tons.

Now I’m just guessing here, but let’s say the trucks that carry in the trash haul about 15 tons each trip. That would mean some 4,000 truck trips to that dump every week. Even if each truck hauls twice that much, we’d still have nearly 2,000 trips per week. And that only counts trips into the place. It takes an equal number of trips to get the trucks out for another load.

So you say, “Gee, Darryl, that is only around 330 round trips per day on average. That isn’t that many.”

It isn’t that many? Well, again, that is just the trips into the place. There is an equal number out, we hope.

So in my limited research on this subject, I’ve now got more questions to be answered. Little questions like this:

What does the $350,000 that is paid to the Val Verde Civic Association pay for? Roads and medical clinics? And who decides how that money is spent? Is it up to the L.A. County-appointed committee members to decide where the money goes? Just how does that work? Don’t you have to be elected to spend public money? Need some answers here, folks.

Sources of waste (in tons) dumped at Chiquita in 2013 (partial list).

So we’ve got a few riddles about the “hush money” the Val Verde Civic Association gets from the trash folks at Chiquita Canyon. Would someone like to provide some answers?

Is it just me, or is it one of those magical coincidence moments when I looked south and over the Santa Clara River from near the entrance to the landfill and envisioned those 20,000 new homes over there? Short drive for the trucks.

Of course, that won’t mean the trash from those homes will go there. It appears some of the trash from the city of Santa Clarita has been deposited in the Palmdale Landfill, Sunshine Canyon and a few other places. Don’t know why. Any ideas out there?

From the state of California reports I’ve read, around 20 percent of the input into the Chiquita landfill is from the SCV (city and unincorporated). The other 80 percent that’s dumped comes from deep inside Orange County and Victorville, too. Ventura and Santa Monica are other popular donors of trash.

This has to be a very lucrative way to make money. I wonder if they hand out a prize to the trash truck that drives the greatest distance to dump at Chiquita Canyon?

The state records show there were even some loads from San Diego County. All that way up the 405 in a trash truck. Just what I always wanted to do. Where do I sign up?

You can see all of the different cities Chiquita imports its trash from [here].

Again, all of the increased capacity for this dump is being requested in the best possible manner, and folks appear to be following the regulations.

But the real question is, are we prepared to double the number of trucks running around in that area? And just what mitigation is afforded the folks NOT in Val Verde due to the increased truck traffic? And smell? And … you get the idea.

Just what do the folks in Val Verde think about all of this? Do they want the increased traffic and hassle?

Something just doesn’t seem right here, folks. I’ve not been able to figure out my concerns, but given what Los Angeles County has done to us before, I really don’t expect anything less than poor service, poor logic and poor answers to be given to us. When it comes to the Castaic-Val Verde area, it always seems the members of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors trip and stumble before coming up with yet another unworkable solution.

That is just the way it rolls here in the future Canyon County.

Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

Have a wonderful day, my friends. Watch out for those trash trucks.

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].