Why Sunshine Canyon Landfill odors have drawn attention by public health officials

Feb. 11--GRANADA HILLS -- Realtor Chandra Ramsinghani came home from work one night this week to be slammed by a putrid wall of stink.

The smell of millions of tons of rotting trash at nearby Sunshine Canyon Landfill, she said, had once again wafted into her Granada Hills home.

"Same old smell, just like rotten eggs," Ramsinghani said Wednesday. "We cannot open our windows, our doors and get fresh air. This is disgusting. I don't know how long it will take to fix it or close down the dump."

In recent months, the massive natural gas cloud leaking from a broken well north of nearby Porter Ranch cast an international spotlight on the public health risk and displaced students from two schools and thousands of San Fernando Valley residents.

For years, however, denizens of nearby Granada Hills and its elementary school have lodged thousands of complaints about odors stemming from the Sylmar landfill -- while inhaling some of the same pollutants cited at Porter Ranch, including methane, benzene and toluene.

Moreover, they say, they've suffered from many of the same health symptoms, including nausea, bloody noses, skin rashes and congestion.

But while Los Angeles County health officials last week acknowledged the growing number of odor complaints to air regulators about Sunshine Canyon, they said they didn't receive reports from medical providers about illnesses associated with the stench.

"However, odors can impact well-being and quality of life," said Cynthia A. Harding, interim director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in Feb. 3 letter to the Board of Supervisors, "which are important to the public's health."

That's the approach that Dr. Cyrus Rangan, director of the department's Bureau of Toxicology and Environmental Assessment, took when addressing residents Tuesday during the first public health briefing on Sunshine Canyon.

Hosted by the North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens, it drew an estimated 100 residents wielding signs such as "Sunshine Canyon Dump Biohazard" and "Clean Air is a basic Right!," used at a dump protest last fall.

"Odors are a real health issue when they impact your quality of lives," Rangan said during a two-hour meeting at the Knollwood United Methodist Church. "(But) we're not talking about an emergency situation here.

"It's gone on for a number of years; it's not like anyone's falling over and dying today because of a problem like this. But it is a problem of exposure to (agents) causing a health impact, and we are acknowledging that."

Rangan, who said his agency doesn't have any enforcement powers, said it would employ its bullhorn to "leverage" government action. He said he hoped to convene all the agencies tasked with regulating the landfill in the same room "to try to figure out what's happening here and what's been done."

He also called for real-time monitoring of dump gases within local neighborhoods, based on what's been recently learned during the Southern California Gas Co. leak near Porter Ranch, in addition to a real-time odor reporting system, such as a cellphone app.

He said he's trying to set up a more creative, high-tech way for residents to report stench -- the odor, the character of that odor, the GPS coordinates of those odors -- in order to give health officials a clearer picture. "That's my commitment to you," Rangan said from the front of the sanctuary. "We're in the baby stages of working this out.

"But I can't promise you we can get the odors down to zero."

The Sunshine Canyon Landfill, operated by Republic Services of Phoenix, takes in up to 9,000 tons of trash each day, piling 2.5 million tons into the canyon. The 58-year-old dump, divided between unincorporated L.A. County and city land at the base of Newhall Pass, accepts a third of all of the county's garbage.

But since it reopened on the city side a decade ago, complaints from adjacent Granada Hills have rocketed. Meanwhile, the Sunshine Canyon trash has grown wetter and more organic, as a result of paper, glass and plastic diverted for recycling. This creates more landfill gas.

Between January 2009 and December 2015, residents filed 8,414 odor complaints with air regulators, which issued 163 confirmed nuisance notices and eight notices for failing to control ground emissions. Last year drew a record 1,795 complaints about smells, of which 39 resulted in confirmed nuisance notices.

But since the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued a nuisance abatement order six years ago to Republic Services, officials say, the company has spent $30 million to control gases coming out of Sunshine Canyon.

Its gas collection system includes a specialized tarp employed last year, instead of dirt, to control stench.

"They (now) have the capability to burn it off, so it doesn't become a nuisance to the community," said Mohsen Nazemi, deputy executive officer for the air district in charge of engineering and compliance. "As the gas collection system improves, they are able to collect more gas, so the problem is significantly reduced.

"Are all the odors gone? No. But there are significant improvements."

He said air monitoring both in Sunshine Canyon and Van Gogh Elementary School found "no toxic compounds of concern" rising above normal background levels for the region.

Republic Services officials have said they believe in being "good neighbors" and have donated 900 acres for parks and open space as well as planting more than 7,500 oaks and native trees in the surrounding hills.

Granada Hills residents, however, said Tuesday that the public nuisance from Sunshine Canyon Landfill continues.

They say they're fed up with what they say has been inaction and failure by various agencies that oversee landfill operations. A class-action lawsuit, filed in 2012, now works its way through the courts. But city attorney action has been on the fence.

Residents say they want action by public health officials and regulators like stringent measures taken at Porter Ranch.

"The people who are the most impacted by these kinds of things are the young, the infirm and the elderly," said Wayde Hunter, president of the grass-roots North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens. "That's why I think it's important that the Department of Public Health gets this right -- and does something about this.

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