A Landfill Disillusion: Puente Hills
NOTE: I DELETED THREE PARAGRAPHS STILL
Imagine a park, filled with the usual community antics, only to find out the frolicking children on the
playground are cavorting on a thin layer of earth between what was once a landfill. The family picnic blanket is
laid upon an attempt to cover up what use to be mountains of non-degradable waste. The beautiful ‘natural’
landscape is growing from the roots and history where one third of America’s trash once resided. Americans like
to believe in some sort of uncultivated, unaltered rustic earth, yet Americans generated about 251 million tons
of trash per year and where does all that trash go? (Environmental Protection Agency). All 251 million tons gets
distributed to local landfills, disturbing the natural landscape, eating away its aesthetic quality. According to
Conserve Energy Future, a site concentrated on future environmental conservation, landfills can contribute to
soil pollution when contaminated with toxic chemicals and pesticides, lead to problem of skin cancer and human
respiratory system. The land which the landfill sits on may be forever damaged, tainting the local environment
for many years. The Puente Hills Landfill, largest in America, sits between two family orientated communities,
has 4 million tons of garbage, about one-third of Los Angeles County's trash, added to this man-made mountain
each year. This landfill has been piling trash for over 56 years soiling the ground it’s laid on up until the recent
2013 closure. Its post-closure plans contain a restoration of the landfill into a recreational park open to the
public, trying to reestablish the original environment. Yet, the idea of land rehabilitation disillusions the public of
the landfill’s history, ignoring the land’s future environmental and health issues by transforming it into public
usable land.
Once the landfill was declared ‘inactive’ as a result of its 2013 closure, the public magically erased the
idea of ‘what did the landfill do with all this trash’. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes, author of
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, quoted in the NPR article, “Closing America's Largest Landfill,
Without Taking Out The Trash” by Liyna Anwar, said, “"You notice what we call our trash companies: They're
waste 'management.' Think about that," Humes says. "They're managing our waste; they're not reducing our
waste, they're not disappearing our waste.”” The public already has a preconized notion that after they place
their garbage in the bin and wait for the sanitary district trucks to take them away, it no longer exists in the
world. Generally, people don’t like the site of trash nor want to have it on their own property knowing that it
can damage their own land. But if the junk is out of sight, it becomes out of mind. Whether the landfill is active
or not, the trash is still there sitting in a designated land rather than sitting in peoples own bins, this time
contributing to more environmental destruction. However, when the City of Industry proposed plans to extend
trash transfer measures, ultimately causing interaction with the community, residents like North Whittier
resident Rosario Taylor questioned in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, “How is it going to impact our
neighborhood? Will there be noise? How many tons of garbage will be coming here? How many trucks will be
coming? What will be the quality of our life? I'm very concerned because we're close to it." Like Taylor, people
start to acknowledge the landfill companies and their actions only when faced. Sadly, to create more up rise and
concern about the landfill and its future, it would take a lot more interaction for all communities that send their
wastes to Puente Hills to acknowledge its true potential dangerous.
Chemicals can also quielty form and influence the land into a downward environment. According to
Environment Victoria, a site for environmental education, “Many materials that end up as waste contain toxic
substances. Over time, these toxins leach into our soil and groundwater, and become environmental hazards for
years.” Naturally, the environment works in a cycle with interacting parts. Nature will take its course no matter
what is seeped into its soil. When our soil is tainted, rain
water seeps into the ground bringing those toxins with it
polluting groundwater, a source the population heavily
depends on for drinking water. Also runoff from rain can
take the toxins, or even form new toxins like Leachate,
“...the liquid formed when waste breaks down in the landfill and water filters through that waste,” and pollute
local waters. Landfills effect more than the usual biosphere we make it out to be as it leaks into the
hydrosphere. The waste ends up creating new chemicals and runoff happens to help transport it to other parts
of the environment. With communities like Whittier and Hacienda Heights surrounding the landfill, their own
resources can be damaged due to natural transportations.
As the soil is contaminated, so does the health in the public due to proximity of the land. Noted by Jeffery
N.T Squire in Biomedical Pollutants in the research article Urban Environment and Implications for Public
Health: A Case Study, “People living within one kilometer of municipal solid waste incinerators suffered
significant increases in all cancers, including a 37 percent increase in liver cancer.” If the people living near the
landfill when it was active started to experience health issues, wouldn’t the people interacting with the reuse of
that land be in danger as well? Changing the appearance of the surface can’t change the trash underneath
festering. Also Puente Hills was found in 2005 from a report by landfill operators statewide stating to, “having
about twice the maximum contaminant level allowable for tritium in drinking water,” which is a possible
carcinogen used in producing U.S. nuclear weapons (Michelle, Rester San Gabriel Valley Tribune). For the
recreational park to flourish, the terrain has to be able to tap into that water source to live. This would affect the
life of the plants and animals and affect the cost of maintaining the survival of the wildlife landscape.
Kc
Stay away from rhetorical questions LOL more of are they just trying to throw soil over it and not remember
the trash under it? Just covering it?
Talk more about oh land is pretty no problems ( THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK)
Works Cited Page
Hsu, Shirley. "Industry Pushes Trash Transfer Plant." San Gabriel Valley Tribune (West Covina, CA) (2006):
Newspaper Source. Web. 25 Apr. 2014.
Anwar, Liyna. "Closing America's Largest Landfill, Without Taking Out The Trash." NPR. NPR, 22 Feb. 2014. Web.
11 Apr. 2014. <http://www.npr.org/2014/02/22/280750148/closing-americas-largest-landfill-without-takingout-the-trash>.
Liyna Anwar, a writer on sites like NPR, argues that by the halt of trash dumping activity in the Puente Hills
Landfill will not stop future consequences. The medium is an online news article from the organization NPR.
Anwar mentions the concern that, “It stopped receiving new trash in October, but the old waste will stay. All
those years' worth of garbage will be covered up and remain underneath the ground.” The audience is targeted
towards the people who are in proximity and will in the future be associated with that area.
United States of America. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, 2012.
Web. 13 Apr. 2014. <http://www.epa.gov/waste/nonhaz/municipal/>.
In relevance this site talks more in depth about the certain wastes produced from landfills and overall waste in
general. Process in waste management is cut up into sections from landfills to transportation. There is also
viable solutions proposed throughout the site and gives solutions their own sections in recycling, reduction, and
composting. Evidence lies in statistic data and details given more on an average individual bases and generalized
bases. Also different types of graphs are shown on different sections to help visually. I mostly used this
information rather than the overall picture kind of info but it was still helpful to understand and contribute to
other evidence and commentary. Timeliness would be okay since the statistics are based around 2012 yet the
site was last updated in 2014. This shows that the information and evidence must be similar to today’s only
needing certain small updates as two years have gone by.
Ahmed, Abdelatif Muhkutar, and Wan Norazmin Sulaiman. "Evaluation of Groundwater and Soil Pollution in a
Landfill Area Using Electrical Resistivity Imaging Survey - Springer." Evaluation of Groundwater and Soil Pollution
in a Landfill Area Using Electrical Resistivity Imaging Survey - Springer. Environmental Management, 01 Nov.
2001. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. <http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002670010250>.
In relevance this academic article I only focused on what leachate was and the main components to it. It was
best to get more of an understanding of the liquid made from water passing through waste yet the rest of the
article did go more into details about its certain location and ingredients. Though it was more directed towards
an audience in that field given from the math formulas to describe certain problems, the beginning was helpful
in understanding a bit more of the substance. Evidence would be in the statistical data and in depth on certain
elements that make up the water. But again the rest of the article showed more interest in the mathematical
side in result of numbers. Timeliness is pretty outdated as it was published in 2001 but since the use of the
article for me was mainly definition purposes.