KHTS Radio Santa Clarita Radio – Santa Clarita News
Three Santa Clarita Valley groups are planning to attend Tuesday’s meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to ask for another public hearing about the environmental report for an expansion for the Chiquita Canyon landfill, officials said Monday.
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Officials from the Val Verde Civic Association, Citizens for Chiquita Canyon Landfill Compliance and Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment are requesting another hearing for the Chiquita Canyon Landfill Master Plan Revision Draft Environmental Impact Report, this time with all of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commissioners present.
County officials said the July 31, 2014 meeting, where residents were given a chance to express their concerns about the expansion, was held properly and according to procedure.
“(The commissioners) need to separate themselves from the process and are supposed to have an unbiased and objective view,” said Edel Vizcarra, planning and public works deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich, who added that hearing examiners are sent to public hearings.
The commissioners are supposed to be “the last chain” before county supervisors, he said, and it’s typical to see staff at scoping meetings but not the commissioners themselves.
The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commissioners would possibly review the the final EIR toward the end of this year, once it has been reviewed and “tidied up,” Vizcarra said.
“Community members learned only recently that no hearing would be held before the commissioners during the draft period of the EIR, but only on the Final EIR,” according to a statement Monday from the environmental groups. “We object that this is not a fair process. … The community deserves to be heard before the full commission so that these issues can be addressed rather than rushing the project to approval.”
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.
“A public hearing on the DEIR was conducted by the Department of Regional Planning in Castaic in July 2014 and the Regional Planning Commission will hold another public hearing on the project this year in the Santa Clarita Valley. The County of Los Angeles is currently reviewing the hundreds of pages of public comment and will address all questions and concerns in the Final EIR,” said Chiquita Canyon Spokesman John Musella. “In addition, Chiquita Canyon pro-actively provided a presentation to the Val Verde Civic Association a month prior to the public release of the DEIR in order to give the community plenty of time to review the project. We also participated in dozens of community meetings across the Santa Clarita Valley to various organizations and groups before and during the public review process.”
For more information about the Chiquita Canyon Landfill Expansion, click here.
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Appendix A of the Draft EIR states that purpose of the Scoping Meeting is to solicit suggestions from the public and responsible agencies on the content of the Draft EIR. Upon reading the Draft EIR, I find that many questions and concerns were not addressed in the Draft EIR. These questions and concerns were provided by the public and other agencies and can be found in Appendix A (Appendix A is 120 pages long).
Due to the questions and concerns not being fully addressed in the Draft EIR, the community of Val Verde has made the request to the Department of Regional Planning to have the Draft EIR re-written to include all questions and concerns from the Scoping Meeting.
The Chiquita Canyon Landfill representatives made a presentation in English only at our Val Verde Civic Association meeting earlier this year. They also sent out a public notice for the Draft EIR hearing to the residents of Val Verde, again in English only. In many communities, this would not be a concern, however Val Verde is a community where over 50% of the population speaks Spanish in their home. When the management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill sent out fliers and made presentations in English only, they left out the majority of the residents of our community. On top of this, the Draft EIR was also not translated into Spanish – the only version is in English.
A few months ago, a meeting was held by the Val Verde Civic Association Landfill Committee, regarding the proposed expansion. The Committee hand delivered fliers to all residents of Val Verde, English on one side and Spanish on the other. The morning of the meeting, management from Chiquita Canyon Landfill had fliers hand delivered to the residents of Val Verde in both English and Spanish. The flier listed the pros of the expansion and was designed to look like it came from the Val Verde Civic Association. The purpose of the flier was to get the residents who are pro-expansion to come to the meeting and voice their support. At the meeting, a vote was held and the outcome was 112-0 against the expansion. The interesting thing to note is that management at Chiquita Canyon Landfill ignored the needs of the Spanish speaking residents when it was in their favor (Scoping Meeting, Expansion Presentation and Draft EIR meeting notice – they didn’t want additional comments), however when it was in their benefit (come to the meeting and vote for the expansion), they had a fully translated flier in Spanish.
The community of Val Verde believes that the Spanish speaking residents have not been given an opportunity to attend meetings, ask their questions and voice their concerns, read and review the Draft EIR and most importantly have been ignored and avoided in the approval process. It can be concluded that this was done with the intent of ignoring a majority of the community, since the management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill had acknowledged the importance of communicating with the residents when they created a flier in Spanish, yet they ignored the needs of the Spanish speaking residents at the earlier stages of the approval phase.
As the President of the Val Verde Civic Association, I have made a request with the Department of Regional Planning, for the approval process to be brought back to the Scoping Meeting stage and this time to have the Spanish speaking residents be included in the entire process.
The management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill has publicly stated that they intend to use ill gotten approval cards as a means to show support for the expansion to the county.
The management at Chiquita Canyon Landfill agreed to provide residents of Val Verde a quarterly free dump day event. This was to compensate the residents for their support in the last expansion (1997). A contact was written and both the Chiquita Canyon Landfill management and the Val Verde Civic Association representative signed the agreement. It was also added as a condition of their operating permit with the county. Based on the contractual agreement and as a condition of their permit, the management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill must provide the Val Verde residents a quarterly dump day.
At the December dump day, to the surprise of the the Val Verde Civic Association, the management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill decided to unilaterally change the rules. I cannot speak for the Department of Regional Planning, but I don’t think they were informed of this change in policy either. The change the management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill made is that they added an extra step in the free activities and they did so by taking advantage of the Spanish speaking residents. The added step was to require each resident to come out of their vehicle and walk to an area where representatives from the landfill asked them to sign a support card for the proposed expansion. On top of this, a Spanish speaking resident told me that he was instructed to “sign here” and then he could go in and dump his truckload of trash. Many were not given an explanation of what they were signing, or they were told things in a deceptive manner. One complaint I heard is that a resident was told that the expansion would be exclusive to Val Verde residents (they would not accept trash from outside of Val Verde).
I have asked the management of Chiquita Canyon Landfill to make a formal apology to the residents of Val Verde and to destroy the support cards. Instead, they told me that they would send them to the county to show that the community supports the expansion.
I continually hear the management of the landfill brag about how they’re such good neighbors. If this is their definition of a good neighbor, I’d hate to see what they think a bad neighbor is.
Thank you.
Greg Kimura
President, Val Verde Civic Association
The reason we would like to have had a Commissioner at the Hearing is that things get lost in translation as they are passed from person to person. When someone sees and hears things with his own senses, he is made more aware.
I would like to believe that the Commissioner would want to get a more precise feeling of how the residents of the community either support or reject the Draft EIR and the reasons why. To read that a resident has health issues is much different than seeing it for yourself.
This is a major issue for both the residents of the community and the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. Due to the importance, I have asked the Department of Regional Planning if they could hold another hearing and have the Commissioner hold the hearing.
Thank you.
Greg Kimura
President, Val Verde Civic Association