California likes to pat itself on the back for being a leader in protecting the environment.
Every year, California workers dig up hundreds of thousands of tons of soil contaminated with things like lead, petroleum hydrocarbons and chemicals like DDT. The waste is so toxic, California considers it to be hazardous and requires that it be disposed of at a facility specially designed to handle such dangerous material.
Or, at least, that would be the requirement if the waste stayed in California. It often doesn’t.
A CalMatters investigation found that, for decades, California businesses and government agencies have taken hazardous waste over the border and dumped it at regular landfills in states with weaker environmental regulations.
Among the findings:
- Much of the waste is going to landfills in Arizona and Utah with fewer safeguards and less oversight than permitted hazardous waste disposal facilities.
- Two of the most popular destinations are next to Native American reservations. One of those landfills has a spotty environmental history, Arizona records show.
- One of the biggest out-of-state dumpers is the state’s own Department of Toxic Substances Control which, since 2018, took more than 105,000 tons of lead-contaminated soil from the area around the Exide cleanup in Los Angeles County and disposed of it in Arizona. Most went to a landfill that Arizona regulators labeled in 2021 an “imminent and substantial threat.”
CalMatters reporter Robert Lewis and photo editor Miguel Gutierrez traveled to Arizona and Utah, documenting where much of the Golden State’s toxic waste ends up. The Department of Toxic Substances Control said its decision to take the waste to Arizona is driven by cost and acknowledged the agency doesn’t really know how the out-of-state landfills are managed. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office wouldn’t comment.
David Harper, a member of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, questioned why the Golden State would dump its toxic waste so close to the reservation, which straddles the border between California and Arizona.
- Harper: “If it was not a problem, why didn’t they keep it themselves? Why does it have to come here? Why isn’t it in California?”
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Nothing new here. The cunning have been doing this for decades. Big tanker and freighter ships full of waste and dated or banned pesticides drop off their cargoes in Africa and then take a tax deduction. Los Angeles trucks its sewage sludge, formerly classified as hazardous waste, into Kern County. It was conveniently reclassified by U.S. EPA and is now called “Biosolids. “Each ton of L.A’s sewage sludge off-gasses 3000 cubic feet of methane into Kern’s already over stressed air basin. Methane has a foot print 21 times that of CO2. L.A. is exporting its smog into Kern County. Put it into someone else’s back yard. I worked with the clean up of entire countries in East Africa which were duped into accepting “gift” toxic materials. Black 55 gallon drums of “gift” pesticides were sitting in the hot African sun, usually down some back street in a crowded neighborhood, their ends bulging from the pressure of the heated expanding contents. Others having ruptured spilling their contents. These were all mini-Bhopals. Here in the U.S., entire trainloads of sludge are sent from the East Coast and if they can’t find a spot to dump, will be parked on a side rail and stink. It’s just business as usual. The politicians, judges and regulators just turn a blind eye. Waste is big business and politically powerful.
Dr Edo McGowan
Nothing new here. The cunning have been doing this for decades. Big tanker and freighter ships full of waste and dated or banned pesticides drop off their cargoes in Africa and then take a tax deduction. Los Angeles trucks its sewage sludge, formerly classified as hazardous waste, into Kern County. It was conveniently reclassified by U.S. EPA and is now called “Biosolids. “Each ton of L.A’s sewage sludge off-gasses 3000 cubic feet of methane into Kern’s already over stressed air basin. Methane has a foot print 21 times that of CO2. L.A. is exporting its smog into Kern County. Put it into someone else’s back yard. I worked with the clean up of entire countries in East Africa which were duped into accepting “gift” toxic materials. Black 55 gallon drums of “gift” pesticides were sitting in the hot African sun, usually down some back street in a crowded neighborhood, their ends bulging from the pressure of the heated expanding contents. Others having ruptured spilling their contents. These were all mini-Bhopals. Here in the U.S., entire trainloads of sludge are sent from the East Coast and if they can’t find a spot to dump, will be parked on a side rail and stink. It’s just business as usual. The politicians, judges and regulators just turn a blind eye. Waste is big business and politically powerful.
Dr Edo McGowan