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Raft by Raft, a Rainforest Loses Its Trees

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Raft by Raft, a Rainforest Loses Its Trees

Forests just like the one within the Congo Basin pull enormous quantities of carbon dioxide out of the air, making them important to gradual world warming. The expanded scale of unlawful logging imperils their function in defending humanity’s future.

The forest of the huge Congo Basin, second in dimension solely to the Amazon, is turning into more and more important as a protection towards local weather change because the Amazon is felled. Nonetheless, the Democratic Republic of Congo for a number of years in a row has been shedding extra old-growth rainforest, analysis reveals, than any nation apart from Brazil.

On this lawless commerce, the river is the artery to the world. In some locations, the place once-towering timber are ready for the journey, the water itself is stained caramel from the bleeding sap of felled timber.


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Day by day alongside the forested Congo River banks, rafts held along with little greater than roping and optimism set out on the arduous voyage.

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Our journey started not removed from the group of Loaka.


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College kids gathered to sing the nationwide anthem close to their riverside faculty in Loaka.

Loaka is nestled alongside a tributary flowing into the Congo River. Dozens of wood homes are perched on stilts. Canoes dug from tree trunks line the shore. Branches used for cooking fires smolder in piles close by.

And on the water not too long ago, a flotilla was taking form.

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Males have been peeling switches of vines to tie collectively a raft of dozens of logs reduce from the forest of their yard. Their vacation spot: the sprawling riverside lumber ports of the capital metropolis, Kinshasa, tons of of miles downriver.

It’s a venture involving nearly everybody in Loaka, a rising group that merely can’t make sufficient cash from fishing to broaden its cramped faculty, not to mention purchase backpacks and different provides.

Not one of the males have been longing for the journey, although. The final time they tried it, the journey was a disaster.

“We had so many issues,” stated Bosenga Kongamondo, the city’s high official.

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Bosenga Kongamondo

Again then, they’d set out with 120 logs, however catastrophe struck nearly instantly.

The raft hit a sandbar, ripping free dozens of logs, which floated away. Then, the lads received stranded on one other sandbar for days. Whereas they have been caught, a violent rainstorm swept away much more logs.

Weeks later, after they lastly reached Kinshasa, the lads had solely 37 left to promote. But the village right now feels it has no alternative however to strive as soon as extra, even with out correct slicing permits.

Alphonse Molosa wandered into the thicket not too long ago and clambered atop a conquest: an enormous African coralwood tree mendacity on the forest flooring, its brilliant orange insides bared.

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Felling such a tree doesn’t give Mr. Molosa any sense of accomplishment, he stated. The truth is, he counts himself a lover of timber. He appears ahead to the blooming of afromosia timber, also called African teak, a uncommon species with reds so vibrant he can spot them from his boat in the course of the river.


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“Ah, it’s lovely,” Mr. Molosa stated. “I heard on the radio that timber assist to offer us oxygen that we breathe and for us to outlive. However right here there isn’t a different option to survive with out slicing timber.”

In a couple of weeks, after they’ve collected sufficient logs, he and his neighbors deliberate to push them into the river and as soon as once more hop aboard.


Just a few miles downriver, we stopped at a logging seashore the place a floating market catered to employees on an enormous industrial raft that dwarfed those assembled by Mr. Molosa and his neighbors.

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An industrial logging seashore.

Right here, some 250 large logs with ragged, floppy bark have been being strung with metal cables and readied for the river at a small seashore utilized by a global logging firm.

Industrial logging in Congo is laden with corruption, in response to a current authorities audit. Profitable licenses have been handed out as political favors. The truth is, the previous six ministers of surroundings, the very individuals accountable for defending the forest, are accused of illegally promoting off enormous swaths of it, in response to the audit, which reviewed Congo’s industrial logging as of 2020.

Practically all of the logging, Congolese officers say, right now is in some trend unlawful.

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“Fraud upon fraud,” stated Ève Bazaiba Masudi, Congo’s surroundings minister, who was appointed in April 2021. Just a few months into the job, Ms. Bazaiba opened an investigation after saying her personal signature had been cast on logging licenses.


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Ève Bazaiba Masudi

Monitoring timber in Congo generally is a circuitous route, stuffed with shady characters and massive cash. The large timber lining the seashore downriver from Loaka belonged to a Chinese language firm, Castor, which employees and managers on the seashore stated was tied to “Tango Fort,” the nickname of a Congolese common, Gabriel Amisi Kumba.

Over time, Basic Amisi has been accused of involvement in unlawful mining and arms buying and selling and was sanctioned for human rights abuses by the American and European authorities. His logging concessions, which he bought to Chinese language buyers in 2018, have been issued illegally, the federal government audit stated. In a textual content message, Basic Amisi denied any connection to the corporate.

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Neighboring international locations resembling Gabon have put tight controls on logging lately. Ms. Bazaiba, who can also be deputy prime minister, is below nice strain to do the identical and has begun an effort to rein in corruption that features suspending logging licenses that got out illegally. She and Congo’s president in 2021 secured pledges of $500 million from worldwide donors to battle deforestation.

Throughout a March go to to her workplace in Kinshasa, timber trade lobbyists hovered outdoors her door. Main them was Albert Yuma Mulimbi, the top of the nation’s enterprise foyer. Final yr he was ousted as chairman of the state mining enterprise, Gécamines, amid corruption allegations. Mr. Yuma didn’t return a request for remark.

“I’ve so many pressures,” Ms. Bazaiba stated.

However the logging commerce performs out in locations far faraway from world conferences and stuffy authorities places of work within the capital metropolis.

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Out on the river, the place the silvery water is indiscernible from the sky, the perilous and haphazard nature of the commerce turns into clear.


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A tugboat was bobbing within the shallow water off Castor’s seashore, getting ready to energy a flotilla of logs downriver.

The large rafts are too unwieldy for the tug’s engine to deal with, the crew stated, making the work harmful. They earn about $6 a day. If logs are misplaced, pay is docked, and “if we die, it’s not the duty of the corporate,” stated Mbranda Makombo, the tugboat’s mechanic, a veteran of 5 journeys guiding logs to Kinshasa.

Just some weeks earlier than, Mr. Makombo stated he did, actually, almost die. He and his spouse and baby have been sleeping beneath deck when a bigger boat rammed them. His household was saved solely by males from the opposite boat who reduce via the twisted metallic.

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Mbranda Makombo, proper, in entrance of the tugboat.

As Mr. Makombo spoke, Jean-Louis Boonga Ifaso, an agricultural engineer for Castor, the logging firm, sidled up in a dugout canoe, listening in.

Castor does the correct issues, he stated. It operates a manufacturing facility in Kinshasa the place logs are remodeled into planks utilized in building, and it exports wooden worldwide. (A rustic supervisor for Castor didn’t return requests for remark.)

However Mr. Boonga, who additionally works as an activist, stated he knew effectively the issues of the commerce. He sat in his shallow canoe, gently rocking on the river, and vented: In regards to the energy of cash. About authorities inaction. About how Congo is a sufferer of air pollution created by the industrialized nations that now need Congo’s timber — the identical timber that may assist soak up carbon dioxide from the soiled world they made. In regards to the guidelines that govern the forest that nobody obeys.

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Worldwide corporations observe most legal guidelines, he stated, however not all of them. “On the subject of human assets and their Congolese workers, they don’t have any respect,” he stated.


On the water, disrespect takes many kinds. Brutal rainstorms. Hidden sandbars. And calls for for bribes.


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“Push! Push!”

Throughout the water we heard a captain calling out to a dozen males in waist-deep water, toes wrinkled from a full day spent attempting to interrupt free their 46-log vessel, which was caught on a sandbar.

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On the opposite facet of the raft, Clémentine Ekoba, the cook dinner and cleaner for the crew, tended a small fireplace. “Each journey this occurs,” she sighed.

“The most important drawback is getting caught within the sand. The second greatest drawback is the navy.” Officers alongside the river, underpaid themselves, are infamous for demanding bribes.

Already on this journey, Ms. Ekoba stated, in simply two weeks’ time the crew had paid bribes of flour, beans and aspirin. “They arrive they usually take every thing — even this,” she stated, pointing to an oar.

Ms. Ekoba maintained a secret hiding place beneath the nylon bag stretched between sticks that serves as her tent the place she had squirreled away $50 value of Congolese francs. Thus far, officers hadn’t discovered it.

“However we nonetheless have a protracted journey,” she stated.

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“We import toothpicks

Not all logs journey by raft. Some worldwide corporations function immense metal barges heaped excessive with wooden destined for abroad.


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A jumble of giant logs rested atop one of many barges at a riverside seashore operated by Sodefor, a subsidiary of a Liechtenstein-based firm.

Close by, a person squatted beside a freshly reduce bilinga tree. He pulled out a measuring tape and stretched it throughout the sawed trunk, as gold as ripened wheat. It was greater than six toes throughout.

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Industrial barges like Sodefor’s aren’t proof against the lack of cargo from storms that blow throughout the river, although the massive corporations have refined methods to recapture the logs that get away. Sodefor has even deployed sonar and divers to retrieve logs that spilled into the river throughout a storm.

In an interview, Sodefor’s common supervisor, José Trindade, stated the corporate’s operations have been “utterly authorized.”

“The federal government has to distinguish between the businesses that respect the foundations and people who don’t,” he stated.

Sodefor additionally transforms its timber into plywood earlier than export, Mr. Trindade stated, a follow that Ms. Bazaiba, the surroundings minister, would really like all worldwide corporations to undertake. Lately, she banned exports of uncut timber within the hope that the businesses would rent extra Congolese to form the wooden, relatively than filling these jobs overseas.

“Are you able to think about, we’ve been exporting our timber, however we import toothpicks from China?” she stated. “It is mindless.”

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We pulled onto the shore of Bolobo, a bustling hamlet at a bend within the river that was affected by tons of of planks scattered throughout the sand, remnants of a catastrophe nonetheless enjoying out.


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Three months earlier, a crew of 20 males had set off with a raft of 6,000 good planks, precut in hopes of getting the next value downriver in Kinshasa. They’d pulled into Bolobo to restock on meals when a storm blew in. Very quickly, 1,000 planks had slipped into the river and have been swept away, together with a shelter they’d constructed atop their raft.

For 2 weeks, employees had been slowly reassembling the craft. Males stood in chest-high water, heaving towards a big department they hoped would pry free part of the raft, now half-buried in sand.

“The wind is just not your brother,” stated André Ezabela, one of many raft’s rowers.

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André Ezabela aboard his broken raft.

Etienne Yaekela, the proprietor of the planks, had arrived from Kinshasa simply days earlier than to survey the harm. “Thank God nobody died,” he informed the lads as soon as he noticed the extent of the harm.

Over what was left of the raft, the wind whipped a pink and blue Congolese flag. Our motorboat broke down right here, too, and so we waited two days for our personal repairs, watching boys on the seashore utilizing a damaged plank as a teeter-totter.

As we pulled out of Bolobo, we noticed water lapping throughout one other damaged raft, this one deserted. Just a few items of wooden remained barely tethered, threatening to interrupt free right into a river prepared to say them. A monument to defeat for individuals who would go.

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About 60 miles downstream from Bolobo, the river narrows considerably and deepens. Sandbars disappear. However there are different dangers.


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Crocodiles roam the banks. Navy patrols enhance. Malaria is ever-present.

Nehemie Mokonjo and his raft of 137 logs had made it this far, shedding solely two.

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However the mosquito netting that lashed them collectively was beginning to fray. If the wind picked up, Mr. Mokonjo’s cargo can be in peril. “There may be nothing else that scares us extra,” he stated.

But he had a extra pressing drawback: His little sister was sick.

Jeanne Nzambe, 6, was aboard together with her mom, the raft’s cook dinner. Carrying a poofy pink satin gown with white polka dots and sparkly belt, she lay drooped throughout the logs below a shelter of mosquito netting. She had been feverish for 3 days.


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Jeanne Nzambe on her raft.

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The closest hospital was in Kinshasa, 15 hours away by raft. However our vessel, a motorboat, may get there in three.

As a lot because the river leaves individuals in want, it additionally creates kinship. Folks assist each other.

Mr. Mokonjo hopped aboard, cradling his sister, and the boat raced downriver to discover a clinic.


College desks, superyachts

A criminal within the river, and Kinshasa’s sprawling port of Kinkole comes into view. It’s the final cease for women and men who’ve spent weeks or months on the river. However not for the timber they’ve shepherded right here.

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Rafts line up by the handfuls, tangled within the lily pads of a grimy marsh, ready within the shallows in what is basically a watery parking zone.

Alongside the shore, a cacophony of rumbling forklifts hauls tree trunks throughout knee-deep ruts in dried mud. Screaming chainsaws tear via wooden, spitting splinters into the air. Barefoot laborers muscle logs up the riverbank the place males form them into plywood and planks. Girls acquire scraps of bark to promote to be used in cooking fires.

All have discovered a option to revenue from Congo’s timber. For them, the forest is the one choice for survival.

Disappointment awaits among the rafts’ captains who arrive to seek out their logs are too skinny and immature for buy. All that approach for nothing.

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Logs which might be bought right here will find yourself in Kinshasa’s lecture rooms, the place college students clamor for brand new desks. Others shall be taken overseas to be used as “unique wooden” prospers in billionaires’ yachts that line glittering ports. Many will find yourself in residing rooms everywhere in the world, shaped into trendy tables and cupboards that started as towering timber in Congo earlier than being crafted within the furnishings factories of China or Vietnam.

And the urge for food for these timber reveals no indicators of slowing.

Subsequent door to Kinshasa’s logging port, large new logging barges are being cast as quick as doable, employees say two or three a month, to ship again up the river to collect, all of the extra effectively, much more treasured logs.

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In Their Final Moments, a Pompeii Family Fought to Survive

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In Their Final Moments, a Pompeii Family Fought to Survive

One day in the year 79, Pompeii came under fire. The explosion of nearby Mount Vesuvius sent a mushroom cloud of ash and rock into the atmosphere, pummeling the ancient Roman trading hub and resort in a ceaseless hail of tiny volcanic rocks.

Many residents ran for their lives, trying to find safety with their loved ones before searing volcanic debris buried the estimated 1,500 residents who remained in Pompeii.

In a study published last month in the journal Scavi di Pompei, scientists documented events at one home in the doomed city where a family sought refuge inside a back room by pushing a wooden bed against a door in a vain attempt to stop a flood of volcanic rocks from the sky, known as lapilli.

The small-but-well-appointed residence is known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, after a richly decorated fresco in the dining room. It depicts the mythological siblings Phrixus and Helle escaping their wicked stepmother on a winged ram only to have Helle fall and, ominously, drown in the sea below.

As with many ancient Roman residences, its atrium, an open-roof room centrally located in the home, was used for ventilation and rainwater collection. But on that day, the recess allowed volcanic rock to more rapidly overtake the space. Most Pompeians “had no clue what was happening,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, an author of the study and the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. “Many thought the end of the world had come,” he added.

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In the years that followed, the hot ash that eventually buried the home solidified and left an imprint that archaeologists filled with plaster to reconstruct the shape of the wooden bed that remained. The technique helps illustrate the horror of the Pompeian dead in their final moments and how perishable everyday items made of wood, textiles and leather were situated in their environments.

The skeletal remains of four people, most likely members of the same family, were identified in the study. The lapilli, which reached heights as high as nine feet in some locations, could not be controlled, and researchers believe the people made a final attempt to escape, leaving the small room in which they had barricaded themselves. They got only as far as the triclinium, the formal dining room where their remains were found.

“The family in the House of Helle and Phrixus probably died when the so-called pyroclastic flow, an avalanche of hot ash and toxic gas, arrived and parts of the building collapsed,” Dr. Zuchtriegel said.

He and his colleagues suggest that the remains of the four people found in the home were from a family that stayed behind and may have included some enslaved members who worked at the residence. Still, archaeologists don’t know for sure if they lived there or simply took refuge after the homeowners had already escaped.

“It’s not certain that the individuals found in the house as victims were part of the family,” said Marcello Mogetta, an associate professor of Roman art and archaeology at the University of Missouri who was not involved in the study.

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Among the skeletal remains was a bronze bulla that belonged to a child. The ancient amulets were worn like lockets around the necks of young free boys to shield them from danger until they reached adulthood.

“The amulet was supposed to protect them, so there’s a cruel irony to the fact that it didn’t,” said Caitie Barrett, a professor of archaeology at Cornell University who was not involved in the study.

Bourbon explorers sent by Charles III in the 18th century carried out rudimentary excavations of Pompeii that disturbed the skeletal remains of the victims found in the House of Helle and Phrixus. When they tunneled into the residence in search of valuables like jewelry and artwork, they left behind holes in the walls. These early excavators often had little interest in human remains, either in respecting their preservation, dignifying their deaths or studying their material culture.

But today it’s the human toll that feels most prominent for archaeologists and for many of the visitors who regularly pour into Pompeii. Whether or not the remains belonged to those who were indeed family will be something that researchers may try to uncover through DNA analysis in the near future.

Family or not, it doesn’t change the human tragedy of the story.

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“Whatever the nature of their specific relations, they would have been the last people to offer each other comfort at the end,” Dr. Barrett said.

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Antelope Valley residents say they are fed up with rampant dumping, official inaction

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Antelope Valley residents say they are fed up with rampant dumping, official inaction

Eric Eller likes to ride his dirt bikes through the canyons, dry riverbeds and rocky outcroppings of the Antelope Valley in the high desert north of Los Angeles.

Eller’s an off-the-grid kind of guy with a “Mad Max” vibe — living in a house on a remote plot of land next to a jury-rigged trailer where he tinkers with the remnants and pieces of gutted automobiles, motorcycles and other mechanical debris.

But Eller’s isolation was obliterated last June when dozens of big dump trucks began snaking up the dirt road behind his house and discarding their loads into the nearby dry river canyon. The caravan of waste-haulers continued in the days that followed, often arriving after sundown or in the dark hours before dawn.

Two months later, the convoys abruptly stopped. But not before the makeshift dump’s surface had been camouflaged with dirt and mulch — much of which has since blown away, revealing a 30-foot-deep noxious stew of chopped-up concrete, plastic tampon applicators, faded plastic children’s toys, toothbrushes, syringes, empty caulking tubes, two-by-fours, faded books, weathered Styrofoam pipe insulation, plastic bucket tops and more.

EL MIRAGE, CA – APRIL 18: A truck leaves the Circle Green mulch dump site near El Mirage on Friday, April 18, 2025. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

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Across the Antelope Valley, waste trucks are hauling garbage in from the Greater Los Angeles area and Central Valley towns such as Bakersfield, and then dumping it at makeshift sites. Letters, bills and envelopes visible at several of these waste sites in April showed addresses in Pacoima, Los Angeles and Van Nuys, among other cities.

“Illegal dumping has been a problem in the Antelope Valley for decades,” said Chuck Bostwick, a senior field deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents much of the area. “But it’s gotten worse in the last two or three years, markedly worse.”

In some cases, such as the site behind Eller’s home, the waste sites are flat-out unauthorized. No landowner has given permission to dump at the site, and the waste consists of construction, household and medical debris.

But in others cases, the waste-haulers have the landowners’ permission to dump — but are disposing waste that should be going to landfills equipped to handle household and industrial waste, lawsuits claim.

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In one lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, residents claim that major residential waste-hauling companies including Athens Services, California Waste Services and Universal Waste Systems are dumping hazardous substances without authorization.

The suit claims these companies are disguising the construction and demolition debris as “green waste by unlawfully covering this waste with highly flammable wood chips and other organic waste.”

Eric Casper, the president of California Waste Services, said in an email that his company has “never engaged in dumping waste of any kind, at any time, in the Antelope Valley — legal or illegal. Nor anywhere else.”

A sneaker among the trash dumped at Adobe Mountain

A sneaker among the trash dumped at Adobe Mountain near Lancaster, CA. Locals say this was a canyon before it was filled in to hold trash. Photographed on Friday, April 18, 2025.

Athens Services also denied any illegal dumping, saying in a statement that California’s organics recycling law “encourages sending compostable material to third parties such as farmers and other property owners for beneficial use. This is the material that Athens Services produces and distributes.”

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Universal Waste Systems and other companies named in the suit didn’t respond to requests for comment, nor have they filed responses to the federal suit.

Residents say there are more than 100 dump sites scattered throughout the valley — from Lake Los Angeles to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve and north to Mojave — that they contend are unauthorized.

Some of these sites cover hundreds of acres and extend dozens of feet deep. And residents worry that what they can see — from the roads or their homes — is just the tip of a malodorous and malignant iceberg, and that there are probably dozens more they haven’t yet identified.

They complain they are plagued by the toxic, sour and rotten-egg like smells emanating from the discarded trash that cooks in the hot sun and then wafts across their properties.

They also note that the flammable mulch and other materials in the dump, combined with a broiling desert sun, makes for an acute fire risk.

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Between 2020 and 2024, the Los Angeles County Fire Department responded to 42 mulch or trash-related fires in the Antelope Valley, ranging from a quarter-acre to 22 acres, ultimately costing taxpayers roughly $1.6 million to extinguish, according to Los Angeles County documents.

Ashley Mroz, who lives in the Antelope Valley community of Neenach, said a mulch-covered dump site spontaneously combusted near her home last summer.

“It had been smoldering for days and days,” said Mroz, one of the plaintiffs in the federal court suit. “We could not even go outside. The smell was so horrific.”

Trash dumped at Adobe Mountain

Trash dumped at Adobe Mountain near Lancaster, CA. Locals say this was a canyon before it was filled in to hold trash. Photographed on Friday, April 18, 2025.

And the scourge has spread beyond the dump sites: Shredded plastic debris can be seen hanging from roadside Joshua trees and creosote bushes. While a midday view across the arid landscape reveals a sea of glimmering, reflective glass shards, like the tips of cresting waves over a vast, brown ocean.

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According to Antelope Valley residents and the federal suit, property owners in some cases have given permission — and received payments for — waste to be dumped on their land. Not only do these sites pose a nuisance to the neighbors who live adjacent to or near them, in some cases the material being dumped includes industrial and household waste that can leach into the groundwater.

In its statement, Athens pointed out that property owners sometimes give permission to accept material from multiple waste companies.

“To the extent there are any instances of noncompliant material, we are confident the evidence will demonstrate that it came from another source,” Athens said.

Encounter in Adelanto

On a blustery day in April in the high desert town of Adelanto, local residents watched as two dump trucks offloaded their waste into a San Bernardino county-certified organic waste dump site that is surrounded by eight- to 10-foot high berms of mulch-like waste laced with shredded plastic, insulated wires and chopped-up, plastic children’s toys.

Through a break in the berm, the residents could see that the ground around the recently dumped haul glittered in the sunlight with broken glass, while stalks of what appeared to be insulated wires and rigid plastic stood sentry across the 138-acre expanse.

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Two men sitting in a silver GMC pickup truck who were watching the disposal drove over to the gawking residents.

When the residents asked who they were and what the trucks were dumping, the men declined to answer and referred questions to the owner of the property, which The Times later determined to be Kevin Sutton, the owner of a company called Circle Green Inc. Sutton didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As neighbors and a Times reporter and photographer drove away from the site, the silver pickup followed for several miles, tailgating and swerving erratically. The truck turned around only when the small caravan came across a handful of heavily armed California Fish and Game law enforcement agents parked alongside the road.

“It’s the Wild West out here,” said Kristina Brown, a Lancaster property owner who is a party to the federal suit.

A convenient dumping ground

The Antelope Valley’s proximity to Los Angeles and its vast stretches of wild desert make it a prime target for unauthorized dumping.

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Sitting at roughly 3,000 feet above sea level, and surrounded by the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona and San Gabriel mountains, the valley is also divided by jurisdiction — with Los Angeles, Kern and San Bernardino counties all claiming some territory.

“For decades, our illegal dumping was small-time stuff,” said Bostwick, Supervisor Barger’s field deputy. “It was somebody who had a sofa they couldn’t be bothered to take to the dump or they didn’t want to pay, so they dumped it out in the desert. There was commercial dumping then, but it was small time as well.”

But then the state’s waste laws changed, he said.

Starting in 1989, California began requiring municipalities to divert 50% of their waste away from landfill and toward more sustainable waste management solutions, such as recycling and compost. And as Bostwick noted, the vast open spaces of the Antelope Valley beckoned.

In 2022, lawmakers implemented Senate Bill 1383, which initially mandated the diversion of 50% of all food and organic waste away from landfills, but increased to 75% on Jan. 1, 2025. Another 2020 law closed a loophole that had allowed waste companies to dump green waste in landfill, but not have it counted against them. As a result, the need for dumping grounds increased again.

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Cities, counties and towns that fail to meet the diversion rates risk fines of up to $10,000 a day.

Mounds of dumped loads

Mounds of dumped loads at this location south of E. Avenue M in Lake Los Angeles. The mounds contain mulch, trash and construction debris. The site was found by a resident who followed a truck onto the dirt roads. Photographed on Friday, April 18, 2025.

Residents, lawmakers and experts say while the spirit of these laws is noble, in many areas of the state, the infrastructure to handle the diverted waste is lacking — especially in Southern California, where there is not nearly enough farmland or water to handle the increased volumes of green waste leaving the region’s cities and suburbs.

As a result, waste companies and haulers — trying to keep costs down and maintain city contracts — are tempted to dump the waste wherever they can, while local governments are reluctant to crack down on violations, Bostwick said.

State regulations have made “disposal much more expensive and hard to deal with, and so that’s increased the financial incentives for companies or individuals to just dump illegally,” he said.

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There’s also very little enforcement.

According to Los Angeles County data, while taxpayers spent roughly $1.3 million between 2017 and 2018 to mitigate illegal waste disposal in the region, that number jumped nearly fourfold in 2022-2023, when taxpayers had to foot $4.46 million to mitigate the problem.

At the same time, the number of cases filed with the Environmental Crimes Division of the district attorney’s office decreased from 15 in 2019 to three in 2023.

In February, CalRecycle, the state’s waste agency, finalized emergency orders they say should empower local law enforcement agencies to stop the illegal disposal. Previous regulations only allowed for action against the owner of land where the disposal was occurring. The new orders allow enforcement officials to target parties that are dumping the materials and the facilities that provided the material.

The orders came after officials from the state agency came to visit the area in October 2024 — prodded by Brown, Mroz and other local residents, many of whom have spent years calling state and local officials about the problem.

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Enforcement of these orders, however, is the responsibility of the county, said Lance Klug, a spokesman for the state waste agency.

“Local enforcement agencies can best speak to their enforcement actions to date, and any anticipated next steps, now that emergency regulations are in effect,” he said.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted a measure last year requiring mulch suppliers to take back any contaminated or illegal waste dumped on private land. The measure, which was sponsored by Barger, also directed county agencies to require “stringent record keeping for all land application operations regarding the origin of all incoming loads and testing results from all mulch suppliers.”

County officials couldn’t immediately provide numbers recently when asked how many enforcement actions had been taken.

“There’s literally no enforcement,” said Brown, who worries that the situation is only going to get worse.

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Last month, Eller was riding his dirt bike when he stumbled upon a 60-acre expanse of freshly dumped construction debris, medical waste and compost on a plot of land miles away from any major road.

The tire marks from dump trucks hadn’t yet been blown away by the incessant gales of the high desert. No fences or berms were erected to contain the site, making it impossible to see from the road or along the horizon.

He said it feels like they are living in a real-life game of whack-a-mole: As soon as he and his neighbors identify and report one site, the haulers move onto another.

And they say they feel abandoned by regulators, who they say are doing nothing to stop it.

“It feels like we’re screaming into the wind,” Brown said.

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At the Biennale in Venice, a Fantasy Island Imported from Mexico

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At the Biennale in Venice, a Fantasy Island Imported from Mexico

Mexico City’s small urban farms — known locally as chinampas — practice a sort of agriculture in reverse: instead of bringing water to land as most farms do, chinampas bring land to water.

The chinampas in use today go back about a thousand years, to when Aztec farmers began building rectangular fields on top of vast lakes and growing food for what was then the city of Tenochtitlan. There were tens of thousands of chinampas at one point, arranged in strict grids with narrow canals between them, though many were destroyed or abandoned (along with the rest of the Mesoamerican metropolis) after Hernán Cortés and his invading Spanish soldiers rearranged the civic order in 1521.

But working chinampas continue to exist in the southern Mexico City neighborhood of Xochimilco — despite continuing encroachment by developers and competition from factory farms — operating mostly as family businesses that produce heirloom lettuce, radishes, dahlias and other crops. Lately, the farms’ irrigation-friendly ways are getting fresh attention in a world rocked by climate change and suffering from widespread droughts.

Could other places around the globe borrow the idea of creating “floating islands,” as the fields are sometimes called, which are engulfed by water? A team of Mexican designers, landscapers and farmers believes the ancient technology may be widely adaptable, enough that they will recreate a chinampa for their country’s pavilion at this year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice.

“Chinampas have a simple and intelligent design, created in a collective way that benefits not only people but all of the surrounding living beings, too,” said Lucio Usobiaga, a team member who has spent the last 15 years defending the remaining chinampas through a nonprofit he founded called Arca Tierra.

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Mexico’s pavilion is a neat fit for the biennial’s main exhibition, “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective,” which is intended to show design projects that address climate change in creative ways. The chinampas are at once man-made and organic and can succeed only if there is cooperation among farmers, policymakers and the growing number of tourists who float through on popular canoe tours, gazing at fields of corn and flocks of egrets and pelicans.

Promoting the chinampa as an inspiration for eco-friendly design was an obvious choice for the biennale, team members said. “Venice is also built on water and has the same kind of vulnerabilities that Xochimilco has,” noted Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo, a founder of the design firm Pedro y Juana.

They pointed out that Venice and Xochimilco were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites in the same year, 1987, and both places are island communities navigable by boats and working to balance the positive and negative aspects of tourism.

Venice has its iconic gondolas, while Xochimilco has its trajineras, flat-bottomed vessels, decorated in bright colors and fake flowers that take visitors on party-themed excursions. Both boats are operated by pilots who push them along channels using long poles.

As for how to recreate a chinampa on-site, that took some imagination. And compromise.

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The Aztecs constructed their islands over time, using reeds and branches to make fences in the mucky lake bottom. These formed boundaries for multiple layers of sediment and decaying vegetation (and sometimes human sewerage) until the islands rose far enough above water to be farmed. In addition to growing crops like corn, beans and squash — using the traditional milpa agricultural method that naturally preserves nutrients in soil — they planted trees on the corners of the islands to stabilize the land.

Mexico’s pavilion, inside the biennale’s Arsenale complex, will feature a stripped-down version, much smaller than the 500 square meters (0.12 acres) of a typical chinampa. The exhibition will be enhanced by videos produced in Mexico City featuring real chinamperos, as the farmers are called, and bleachers will be installed along the walls. Artificial lighting will replace sunshine.

In the center will be a working garden planted with vegetables, flowers and medicinal herbs. (The crops were started in an Italian nursery and transferred to the Arsenale by boat in mid-April.) They will mature during the biennale, which continues through Nov. 23.

“By the end of the biennale, we will be able to harvest corn and make tortillas,” said Mr. Usobiaga. “Before that, we can harvest beans, squash, tomatoes and chiles.”

Visitors will learn about special seed cultivation techniques that are unique to chinampas and will have the chance to plant seedlings themselves.

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In a nod to local agriculture, the chinampa will also employ a version of vite maritata, a practice established in ancient Etruscan agriculture that calls for planting grapes around trees, which serve as a natural trellis system for the vines. The exhibition team sees a link between the two forms of agro-forestry, combining trees and crops into one ecosystem.

“We are going to see this dialogue between two ancient cultures that both have a lot to say about how we can move forward,” Mr. Usobiaga said.

The exhibition team members said they wanted to be careful not to overly romanticize chinampas because they are not easy to duplicate on a scale that could feed a large population today. The farms work in Mexico City because they sit on a lake that lacks an outlet to another body of water, making water levels relatively easy to control. The opposite is true, of course, in Venice, which is on a lagoon close to the sea and always under threat from flooding.

Also, the economics of small farms — high production costs, low yields because of their size — make it difficult to turn a profit. Farmworker wages are generally too low to support people in urban areas, and the backbreaking work of planting and harvesting has lost prestige.

“This is a big problem here, that people, especially young people, don’t want to work the soil on chinampas anymore,” said María Marín de Buen, the team’s graphic designer.

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Even in Xochimilco, many chinampas lie fallow because their owners cannot make a living. Some have been turned into soccer fields, which are rented out to the community; others are event venues where people celebrate weddings or birthday parties. Officially, the land is restricted from development, as well as from cattle grazing and the hunting of endangered animal species, though these things happen with alarming frequency.

Still, the team sees something inspirational at play: a connection between nature and the built environment, between existing water resources and the need to construct houses and schools. Architects who visit the biennale may not go on to design large swaths of farmland, but they can replicate the idea on a smaller scale using whatever conditions exist, said Jachen Schleich, a team member who is a principal of the Mexico City architectural firm Dellekamp + Schleich.

“Even if somebody does this in his backyard, he can at least feed his family, or the people on the four floors of his building, Mr. Schleich said. “It could be like a micro-intervention in the landscape or a public space.”

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