A group of Santa Clarita Valley residents who live near a landfill seeking permission from Los Angeles County to expand are asking county officials for more time and more bilingual support to consider the landfill’s expansion.

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The proposed Chiquita Canyon landfill expansion is undergoing the required public comment period, which is expected to end Sept. 23. The comment deadline has already been extended once, from its original date of Aug. 24.

“The request is made on the grounds that literature pertinent to the proposal, including the environmental report, as well as notices of public hearings and meetings, are only being made available in English,” according to an informal group of residents calling themselves the Citizens for Chiquita Canyon Landfill Compliance, or CCCLC.

Related: Chiquita Canyon’s Val Verde Landfill Plan To Be Discussed In Castaic

A representative from the Chiquita Canyon landfill in Val Verde said the landfill began outreach at least a month before the comment period, and operators have made numerous efforts to work with the area’s residents.

“When we presented at the Val Verde Civic Association on June 12, the VVCA did not provide a Spanish translator for Val Verde residents at the meeting, nor was one requested,” said John Musella, a Chiquita Canyon landfill representative who previously was appointed to serve on the Val Verde Community Advisory Committee by Supervisor Michael Antonovich from 2005-11.

“In fact, as part of the 1997 agreement between Chiquita Canyon and Val Verde, Chiquita Canyon paid for and provided Spanish translation equipment to the Val Verde Civic Association at their request. Apparently, that equipment has since been misplaced,” he said.

About two-thirds of Val Verde residents speak Spanish at home, according to 2012 Census data offered by the group.

At the heart of the debate for some residents is the contention they were told the landfill would close in 2019 — while landfill officials say nothing in the language of their conditional use permit precludes them from applying for a permit extension.

Related: Chiquita Canyon Expansion Project Open For Public Comment

The 639-acre landfill site, which is owned by Waste Connections and permitted for about 257 acres of waste, is looking to double its daily disposal limits, set aside of land for a potential conversion technology site, improve its entrance and support facilities and extend the life of the landfill, to name a few of the project’s goals.

The landfill is located outside city of Santa Clarita limits about three miles west of the intersection of Interstate 5 and Highway 126.

A petition against the landfill is being circulated online by the CCCLC.

“A lot of people in Val Verde, when they were buying their property, were told that it would shut down (by 2019), not be open for another 40 years,” said Erica Larsen, a CalArts grad and Val Verde resident who bought a home with her husband on Tax Day last year.

Musella said that’s just not the case, and suggested the misinformation was coming from within the community, not the landfill’s operators.

“We have followed all of the requirement by the County of Los Angeles in providing public notice and notification for the draft EIR,” Musella said.

In addition, the landfill’s representatives actively are negotiating the establishment of two funds to compensate residents for their potential concerns with the dumping grounds.

“It would be two separate agreements, one with Val Verde and one with Castaic,” Musella said. “We would basically be continuing the existing fund in Val Verde, and then we would establish a new community benefits fund in Castaic.”

The CCCLC is not wholly opposed to the expansion, Larsen said, as the group does not advocate a formal position, but is more of a group of 20-30 residents to get together and discuss concerns.

“Our main goal is just to have compliance,” she said. “We’re allowing people to explore their own avenue; some people want the place closed, others want to see if the expansion can be a little more reasonable and transparent, as far monitoring the gases and other concerns.”

The need for the size of the expansion has also been called into question, because only about one-fifth of the trash brought there is from the Santa Clarita Valley, according to state data.

The proposed project will increase the permitted waste footprint within the existing property line by approximately 143 acres by extending it slightly south toward the existing landfill entrance and to the north and east.

The wastefootprint will increase from the currently permitted acreage, approximately 257 acres, to approximately 400 acres. It would also increase the permitted height of the landfill by 133 feet to a maximum elevation of 1,573 feet.

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