Tag: California

Odors, Leakage and Containment: The Story of a Southern California Landfill

In Val Verde, California, an unincorporated community just a few miles north of popular amusement destination, Six Flags Magic Mountain, it is possible to glimpse the top of the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster – The Superman-  from nearly anywhere. Another, less popular, but arguably as important site lies even closer. Chiquita Canyon Landfill, claiming the designation of second oldest landfill in Los Angeles county, has its official property boundary less than a mile from the western edge of Val Verde. When I lived there in 2013, Six Flags Magic Mountain and Chiquita Canyon landfill were landmarks, one towering in the distance and one burrowing beneath, both at the edge of perception. (read more...)

SOS! Save Our Sea! California’s Salton Sea demands action, but what kind?

This March, California’s State Water Resources Control Board called for a public workshop to re-evaluate the state of the Salton Sea, a complex and notoriously disastrous salt lake in the southeastern California desert. Nearly 200 people responded to the call, crowding in to a hearing room in downtown Sacramento to give testimony on mitigation and restoration projects, consider drought impacts, argue for the Sea’s environmental and economic value, and discuss the enormous water transfer agreements that threaten to damage it even more. Attempts to define the problem and its stakes have gone on for decades, but it is still far from clear whose fault is it that the Sea is still shrinking, still dying, or still dangerous, or, for that matter, if anyone can (or should) keep trying to fix it. As a semi-permanent disaster landscape, the Salton Sea is best defined not by the fall-out from a singular event nor by the slow accumulation of risk, but by a decades-long dynamic tension between mitigation of danger and restoration of health. “SOS! Save Our Sea!”, a popular slogan of local activists, is both a call to account for an irreversibly toxic present, and a reminder that the Sea was and still is a vibrant place worth saving. (read more...)