A vast canyon of buried garbage has been smoldering inside a landfill in the Santa Clarita Valley, inducing geysers of liquid waste onto the surface and noxious fumes into the air.

In the Inland Empire, several fires have broken out on the surface of another landfill. In the San Fernando Valley, an elementary school has occasionally canceled recess due to toxic gases emanating from rain-soaked, rotting garbage from a nearby landfill. And, in the San Francisco Bay Area, burrowing rodents may be digging into entombed trash at a landfill-turned-park, unloosing explosive levels of methane.

These are just a few of the treacherous episodes that have recently transpired at landfills in California, subjecting the state’s waste management industry to growing scrutiny by residents and regulators.

Landfill emissions — produced by decaying food, paper and other organic waste — are a major source of planet-warming greenhouse gases and harmful air pollution statewide. But mismanagement, aging equipment and inadequate oversight have worsened this pollution in recent years, according to environmental regulators and policy experts.

This week, the California Air Resources Board will vote on adopting a new slate of requirements to better identify and more quickly respond to methane leaks and disastrous underground fires at large landfills statewide.

The proposal calls for using satellites, drones and other new technologies to more comprehensively investigate methane leaks. It also would require landfill operators to take corrective action within a few days of finding methane leaks or detecting elevated temperatures within their pollution control systems.

In recent years, state regulators have pinpointed at least two landfills in Southern California experiencing “rare” underground landfill fires — largely uncontrollable disasters that have burned troves of buried garbage and released toxic fumes into the air. More recently, a new state satellite program has detected 17 methane plumes from nine landfills between July and October, potentially leaking the flammable gas into unwanted areas and contributing to climate change.

Proponents of the proposed rule say the added oversight could help reduce California’s second-largest source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere much more than carbon dioxide. It could also bring relief to hundreds of thousands of people who live nearby landfills and may be exposed to toxic pollutants like hydrogen sulfide or benzene.

“Curbing methane emissions is a relatively quick and cost-effective way to reduce the greenhouse pollution that’s wreaking havoc with our climate,” said Bill Magavern, policy director at the Coalition for Clean Air. “But [we’ve] also been involved in updating and strengthening the rule because we’re seeing the community impacts of leaking landfills, particularly at places like Chiquita Canyon, where we have a landfill fire that is making people in the community sick.”

Nearly 200 landfills statewide would be subject to the proposed requirements — 48 are privately owned and 140 are government-owned.

Many landfill operators oppose the rule, saying the new requirements would saddle the industry with an untenable workload and millions of dollars each year in added costs. These costs could be passed on to residents, whose garbage fees have already risen significantly in recent years.

Sacramento County officials, who operate the Kiefer Landfill, said the proposed protocols were not feasible.

“As a public landfill, Kiefer cannot quickly adapt to regulatory shifts of this magnitude, and these increased costs would ultimately burden the community it serves,” Sacramento County officials wrote in a Nov. 10 letter to the state Air Resources Board.

The vast majority of landfills are already required to monitor for leaks and operate a gas collection system — a network of wells that extend deep into the layers of buried waste to capture and destroy methane.

A hot mess

Chiquita Canyon Landfill in Castaic has become the poster child for the issues plaguing California’s waste management system.

A blistering-hot chemical reaction began inside the landfill’s main canyon in May 2022, roasting garbage in a roughly 30-acre area.

Starting in April 2023, residents of Castaic and nearby Val Verde began to take notice. They called in thousands of odor complaints to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, with many citing headaches, nausea, nosebleeds and difficulty breathing.

Later that year, state regulators learned that the landfill’s temperatures had risen above 200 degrees, melting plastic pipes used to collect landfill gases. An air district inspector also witnessed geysers of liquid waste bursting onto the surface and white smoke venting from large cracks spreading across the reaction area.

Air sampling found elevated levels of lung-aggravating sulfur pollutants and cancer-causing benzene. Air samples in 2023 detected benzene concentrations more than eight times higher than the state’s short-term health limit at Hasley Canyon Park, which abuts Live Oak Elementary School, alarming local parents.

“I personally have transferred my children to different schools further away,” said Jennifer Elkins, a Val Verde resident whose children attended Live Oak. “I spend three hours a day driving my kids to and from school. The commute has been a sacrifice, but it’s also been well worth it, because I know my children are breathing cleaner air, and I have seen their health improve.”

The landfill, owned by Texas-based Waste Connections, installed new heat-resistant equipment to extract liquid waste in an attempt to reduce broiling temperatures. It also installed a large covering over the affected area to suppress odors. It permanently closed and ceased accepting waste this year.

Still, the reaction area has tripled in size and could consume the entire 160-acre canyon for many more years. During other underground landfill fires, elevated temperatures have persisted for more than a decade.

The issue is, once these broiling temperatures start consuming landfill waste, there’s little that landfill operators can do to snuff them out.

The fumes from Chiquita Canyon have pushed some longtime residents to consider moving. After more than 25 years in Val Verde, Abigail DeSesa is contemplating starting anew somewhere else.

“This is our life’s investment — our forever home that we were building for retirement and on the verge of paying off,” DeSesa said. “And we may have to start over.”

“I don’t know that I can outlast it,” DeSesa added.

Chiquita Canyon is not alone.

Earlier this year, the South Coast air district learned about another fiery chemical reaction brewing inside El Sobrante Landfill in Corona. In August, Waste Management, the landfill’s owner and operator, acknowledged there was a two-acre “area of concern” where landfill staff had observed temperatures climbing above 200 degrees. Riverside County inspectors also found several fires had ignited on the landfill’s surface in recent years, according to public records.

Environmental advocates fear that many more landfills may be on the precipice of these largely unmanageable disasters.

According to an analysis by California Communities Against Toxics, there are 18 landfills in California that have had prolonged heat signatures detected by NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, an online tool using satellite instruments to detect fires and thermal anomalies.

At least 11 of these landfills requested and received permission from either federal or local environmental regulators to continue operating with higher temperatures than currently allowed, according to public records obtained by the environmental organization.

These regulatory exemptions are part of the problem, said Jane Williams, the group’s executive director.

“We have 11 landfills across California that have been granted waivers by the government to basically ‘hot rod’ the landfill,” Williams said. “We would really like EPA and state agencies to stop granting landfill waivers. It’s a permission slip to speed in a school zone.”

Under newly proposed revisions to state rules, operators must be more transparent in disclosing the temperatures in their gas collection systems. If operators detect elevated temperatures, they must take action to minimize the amount of oxygen in the landfill.

While these rule changes might be coming too late to fix the issues near Chiquita Canyon, locals hope it will help others who live in the orbit of the nearly 200 other large landfills in California that could be subject to these rules.

“While there’s still a fight here to try to address the concerns at Chiquita Canyon Landfill, we know that there’s an opportunity to really prevent this kind of disaster from happening anywhere else in our state,” said Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo.

Dangerous leaks

Meanwhile, many other landfills are releasing unsafe amounts of methane, an odorless gas produced by bacteria that break down organic waste.

These emissions present two critical issues.

First, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas — capable of warming the atmosphere 80 times more than the same amount of carbon dioxide over 20 years. Following California’s large dairy and livestock operations, landfills emit the second-most methane statewide.

Second, methane is the primary constituent in natural gas. It can ignite or explode at certain concentrations, presenting a serious safety risk in the event of uncontrolled releases. Several times over the last few years, regulators have detected potentially explosive concentrations in the air and shallow soil near several landfills.

Under current landfill regulations, operators are required to monitor for excessive methane leaks four times a year. Many operators hire contractors to walk across accessible portions of the landfill with a handheld leak-monitoring device, an approach that some environmental advocates say is unreliable.

In addition, some areas of the landfill are not screened for methane leaks if operators consider them to be unsafe to walk across, due to, for example, steep hills or ongoing construction activities.

“Landfills have to monitor surface emissions, but they do that in a very inefficient way, using outdated technology,” Magavern said.

Starting this past summer, California has partnered with the nonprofit organization Carbon Mapper to use satellites to detect methane leaks, and already has found 17 coming from landfills. In one case, researchers saw a large methane plume appear to emanate from Newby Island Landfill in San José and drift into a nearby residential neighborhood.

Although the state has notified these landfill operators, it currently cannot require them to repair leaks detected via satellite. That would change under the proposed amendments to the state’s landfill regulations. Operators would also have to use state-approved technology to routinely scan portions of their landfills they deem inaccessible.

The proposed amendments seek to prevent the most common causes of methane emissions. A series of surveys of landfill operators found 43% of leaks in recent years were caused by one or more of a facility’s gas collection wells being offline at the time.

The new rules would require that such wells can only be offline for up to five days at a time for repairs. Operators would also be required to install gas collection systems within six months of when garbage is first placed in a new part of a landfill — rather than the 18-month time frame currently allowed.

In addition, landfills would be forced to take actions to fix a leak within three days of detection, rather than 10 days. In theory, that should help reduce the risk of leaks from things like cracks in landfill covers (typically a layer of soil or plastic covering) and damaged components of gas collection systems — two other major sources of leaks that landfill operators have reported.

The amended landfill rules could collectively cost private companies and local governments $12 million annually.

Some say that’s well worth the cost.

A contingent of residents who live near Chiquita Canyon Landfill are flying to Sacramento to attend the state Air Resources Board meeting. They are expected to testify on how the fire and landfill emissions have unraveled the fabric of the semi-rural community.

Elkins, the Val Verde resident, appreciated the area’s natural beauty — picturesque hillsides, wildlife and opportunities for stargazing without bright city lights. However, now her family hardly spends any time outdoors due to the noxious odors.

Some of her neighbors have moved away, but Elkins and many other longtime locals cannot, no matter how they fear for their health and safety. “The homes are not selling,” she said. “Other homes sit vacant, and community members are paying two mortgages just to get away. And for many of us, it would be financial suicide to move away and start over somewhere new.”

Autism and mental health are complex subjects. Here are some guidelines we use when choosing how to write about them.

Person first? Identity first? It depends.

When we’re writing about a person’s experience with a mental health condition, we’ll likely use “person-first language.” For example, we will refer to someone as “living with schizophrenia” or “having a diagnosis of schizophrenia,” instead of describing that person as “a schizophrenic.”

The same goes for writing about a disability, which is a mental or physical condition that significantly affects the ability to carry out at least one life activity. An illness or disability is something that a person has, not the essence of who they are.

When it comes to autism, many people with the neurodevelopmental condition prefer what’s called “identity-first language”: describing someone as “an autistic person,” for example, rather than “a person with autism.” Advocates for this language say that autism is an essential part of their identity, and isn’t something that can or should be separated from an individual either in real life or on the page.

Research has found that a majority of autistic people in English-speaking countries prefer identity-first language. Most of the time, that’s what you’ll read in these stories. There are also people in the autism community who prefer person-first language, so there will be times when that’s the more appropriate choice. And of course, when we directly quote someone, we will use the exact words they said or wrote.

In general, when an individual makes clear how they want to be described, we will honor that person’s preferences.

Many autistic people live with mental health conditions. Autism isn’t one of them.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects social communication and sensory processing. It’s not a mental health disorder, and isn’t something that can be cured.

Studies have found that up to 80% of adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder also have at least one additional mental health condition such as depression or anxiety. These conditions are distinct from autism, and often respond to treatment interventions.

When reporting on suicide, there is some information we leave out on purpose.

Multiple studies have found that certain descriptors and details, particularly those connected to the specific method by which a person died, may have a harmful effect on people struggling with thoughts of suicide. For that reason, our stories don’t describe the methods people use to kill themselves, even when we have learned that information during our reporting.

Language evolves and we will too.

Our stories are based on the best information we have available at the time we publish. When we learn new information that changes our understanding of a subject, the words we use will change as well.

Recently, the Los Angeles County Public Health Department reported it had linked the deaths of six L.A. County residents over the last spring and summer to the use of kratom, a widely available but unregulated supplement sold as a remedy for all sorts of health issues.

The deaths prompted public health officials to announce Nov. 7 that they would red-tag and pull from store shelves all products containing either kratom or the synthetic alkaloid 7-Hydroxymitragynine, also known as 7-OH, which is derived from kratom. Both are currently unregulated and not approved for use in the United States or the state of California as a drug product, dietary supplement or an approved food additive, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Unsurprisingly, business owners who sell kratom feel that the health department has overstepped, going too far without understanding how the supplement is helping many L.A. residents. The deaths, they say, are not necessarily due to kratom products, but to interactions with other substances.

Perhaps more important are the benefits that kratom users and some experts claim the drug provides. Many say the problem is with 7-OH — a highly concentrated, synthetic version of natural kratom that is subject to adulteration and fraudulent marketing — and that banning the sale of all kratom products could create an even more dangerous underground market of both kratom and 7-OH.

Indeed, many kratom sellers and users would welcome better regulation, so that they could continue to use the affordable, widely available substance as a way to treat physical pain and mental health issues with more confidence in the efficacy and safety of the products they are selling and buying.

During the months of April and July, a total of six L.A. County adults between the ages of 19 and 39 died with kratom and 7-OH in their bodies, along with other substances including alcohol, prescription sedatives and muscle relaxers, and cocaine.

In the medical examiner’s reports, the cause of death for five of the deceased was listed as a consequence of “mixed drug effects”; the sixth was listed as being caused by an overdose of cocaine.

The Times spoke with three different toxicologists to review these coroner’s reports and get a better understanding of what role kratom or 7-OH may have had in the deaths.

What the experts told The Times is that while toxicologists have an understanding of the possible effect that kratom alone can have on the body, the picture becomes unclear when other drugs are introduced.

Kratom is an herbal extract made from the leaves of Mitragyna speciosa, a tree native to Southeast Asia. It is sold in smoke shops and online in a variety of forms including powders, pills and liquid extracts.

At low doses, kratom causes a stimulant effect with users reporting an uptick in energy. At high doses it creates a sedative effect, said Donna Papsun, a forensic toxicologist with NMS Labs.

Researchers say a majority of kratom users consume the plant to relieve pain. In some cases, people report using it effectively to treat opioid dependence. Others use it to alleviate mental health challenges such as anxiety and depression.

In the last few years, a synthetic version of kratom refined to its psychoactive compound 7-Hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH, has grown in popularity. The much more potent form of the largely unregulated drug has become a concern for public health officials and advocates.

But toxicologists say there isn’t enough research to provide a comprehensive understanding of what concentrations of kratom or 7-OH can be acutely toxic in the body when alone.

It’s likely they can also cause dangerous reactions when combined with other drugs that could amplify their effects, experts said, but the lack of research means doctors just don’t know what they are. That’s where the most concerning risks lie, said Craig Smollin, medical director of the San Francisco division of the California Poison Control System.

In cases where kratom and 7-OH are found in the bodies of a recent accidental death, typically toxicologists have found evidence of polysubstance use — when two or more drugs are taken together either intentionally or unintentionally.

“I don’t claim to have investigated all the reports about kratom deaths, but I haven’t seen too many reports of single-drug ingestions of kratom causing death,” Smollin said.

And while there’s an effective method to test for the quantity of kratom in the body, there isn’t a similarly accurate test for 7-OH. Current tests can only say whether or not it is present. In all six L.A. County deaths, it was.

But, Papsun notes, when kratom is metabolized in the body, part of the breakdown includes 7-OH, which means it will likely show up in medical exams whenever kratom does.

Toxicology labs face significant challenges when trying to quickly develop tests for emerging drugs like 7-OH for use in post-mortem medical examinations, Papsun said. “Adding something to a scope of testing is not easy from a forensic point of view because you have to develop it, validate the test, have available commercial material and it has to be scientifically rigorous because these results can end up in court,” Papsun said.

A further challenge to testing for 7-OH, specifically, is that the compound is “incredibly unstable,” she said. It can be detected in the body at the time of death but by the time the sample is collected and tested, the compound may have started to break down already, leading to inaccurate results.

Robert Powers, a forensic toxicologist at the University of New Haven, agreed that it was difficult to tell whether kratom and 7-OH played a direct role in the L.A. County deaths. “Most of the problems that arise with this drug are in combination with other respiratory depressant type drugs: opiates, benzodiazepines, alcohol,” he said, though he added that the deaths are “not an easy picture” to understand.

That’s why, he said, the L.A. County health department’s move to pull these products off the shelves makes sense. “I think it’s reasonable to recognize that in these cases, kratom could have indeed played a contributory role. And I understand the interest in trying to limit the potential effects of this drug in those mixed cases, so I understand why people would be interested in controlling this drug.”

Smollin, the San Francisco poison center director, concurred, pointing out how much the county still might not know about kratom and 7-OH.

That lack of information trickles down to consumers, who often rely on guidance from local, state and federal agencies about the risks of products like kratom and 7-OH.

Indeed, Dee Macaluso, 74, said she’s had to take it upon herself to seek out other sources of guidance, and experiment with different amounts of daily dosage to alleviate her symptoms of fatigue and trouble breathing from years of chronic lung illnesses.

When she learned of the county’s decision, “it scared me to death that they were going to pull” kratom products. “I told my husband, I don’t know what I’m going to do if I don’t have it and then I won’t be able to get out of bed, or paint or do the little bit that I can do,” she said.

Macaluso was an actor and comedian who in her 60s lived in Park City, Utah, but more recently moved to L.A. when her health declined due to pneumonia that progressed to debilitating infections in her lungs.

Macaluso used to have an active lifestyle, but the damage to her lungs made it so she could barely go up and down the stairs of her Utah home without feeling winded. She also felt the elevation in Park City was straining her health — it’s one reason she chose to move to Los Angeles, which is mostly low-altitude.

She saw a number of specialists, but none offered any options that helped alleviate her symptoms. Then, she stumbled on a documentary that highlighted the benefits of kratom in regards to chronic pain and mental health. She decided to try it.

“I didn’t use it very often, but when I did I found that it helped so many of my issues,” Macaluso said.

She described the effect as a boost of energy that in turn gave her the motivation and strength to get out of bed. “This was much more of a subtle feeling of just relief from being in a state of someone who is unwell and tired,” Macaluso said. “I loved it and I still use it.”

As her illness has progressed, Macaluso has continued to rely on kratom whenever she knows she’ll have a long day or has to attend a function and be sociable.

“It made me feel like my old self — smart mouth, funny and quick. I was a stand-up comic, I did all these things and I was becoming this old tired lady that got winded going up a few stairs and it pissed me off,” she said.

Macaluso doesn’t advocate for 7-OH but she doesn’t want kratom to be banned; she’d rather it be regulated and available to the public.

“I think the government should give us the leeway to educate ourselves,” she said. ”There’s always going to be people that misuse it but I don’t think that those of us who are using it responsibly and getting benefit from it should be penalized.”

Business owners like Abdullah Mamun, who started the company Authentic Kratom 12 years ago, agree with Macaluso’s perspective.

Authentic Kratom began as an e-commerce business based in Canoga Park, and has since grown into three brick-and-mortar locations in Canoga Park, Woodland Hills and Hollywood.

Mamun believes 7-OH is a real risk, and that L.A. County should focus its efforts there. A blanket ban on all kratom products, however, is counterproductive, he said. First of all, based on what his customers have told him over the past decade or so, he believes “kratom doesn’t cure you, but it gives people the relief that they’re looking for and the ability to manage their pain.” Second, red-tagging kratom products would directly affect his Authentic Kratom and the livelihood of his seven full-time employees.

And he welcomes regulation on kratom products.

“We want them to be properly labeled for customers because people should know what they’re putting in their body,” he said.