When Anika Atkins moved to San Juan Capistrano in May, she thought she’d found a safer, more accessible home for her daughter in a wheelchair.
But within two months, she found herself diagnosed with asthma and hospitalized with atypical pneumonia, her home’s air filters clogged with dirt and big questions about the expanding landfill near her house.
“I’ve never had any kind of bronchitis, any kind of issue with my lungs, so that wasn’t even on my radar. I didn’t even really think about the landfill,” Atkins said in an interview. “That’s kind of scary. That just isn’t something I expected.”
She’s one of scores of residents near the Prima Deschecha Landfill who say they’re battling dust and debris caking the exteriors of their homes and clogging up air filters as county leaders weigh doubling the amount of trash going to the landfill on a daily basis.
County leaders have already greenlit an expansion to the landfill itself, blowing up the side of a hill and bringing in excavators to pave the way for future dumping grounds, a move some residents say is only making the problem worse.
After those expansions, multiple residents said the dust in the air got significantly worse, noting coughs, eye irritation and other respiratory problems in their neighbors and friends.
Sonya Stockwell, who grew up living near the landfill and has spent over 30 years in the surrounding area, said both her dogs developed a cough after the expansions began.
“One of them, he’s three, the youngest one. The other we’ve had for like maybe 12 years … they got the cough at the same time,” she said. “I have air filters in every room in our house, and they get pretty dirty.”
Now, some of them are organizing to demand county leaders install air monitoring and ensure they can keep the area clean before they bump up the amount of trash going to the landfill.
When asked about the air quality issues, OC Waste and Recycling spokesperson Francine Bangert pointed to three water trucks spraying 200,000 gallons of water a day to keep the dirt down.
“Our team continues to monitor site conditions and evaluate the effectiveness of these measures to determine whether adjustments are needed,” Bangert wrote, noting they also considered adding permanent, portable misting systems along with other misting options.
Controversy Over Landfill’s Doubling Stalls Approvals
For many years, Prima Deshecha largely stayed out of the Orange County limelight, tucked away in the hills around San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente near homes, but largely out of view.
That’s changed as county leaders wind down operations at the Olinda Alpha Landfill in Brea, one of the county’s three current landfills that’s set to close by 2036 because they’re reaching maximum capacity.
Future trash will be routed to both Prima Deshecha in San Juan Capistrano and the Bowerman Landfill in Irvine, prompting the heads of the county’s waste department to ask county leaders to double the ceiling for how much trash can be delivered at the southernmost landfill from 4,000 to 8,000 tons a day.
Currently, only around 2,600 tons of trash goes to Prima Deshecha every day.
But that got put on pause after residents submitted complaints about the impacts the shift would bring.
Numerous government agencies also questioned the expansion, asking for more clarity on the impacts, including the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the city of San Juan Capistrano and the California Department of Transportation.
It remains unclear when supervisors are set to next discuss the landfill after the delay, with both candidates for the Fifth Supervisor District that contains the landfill saying more needs to be done to address the impacts on the communities around the landfill.
Homeowners Sound Alarms Over Dust
Ellen Vinck, the head of the Rancho San Juan Homeowners Association board, said the landfill wasn’t a problematic neighbor for most of its history, until county staff began blowing up the hillside to make room for expansion.
“I knew they were there when we moved in here,” Vinck said in an interview. “But it wasn’t like this.”
After expansion efforts began, Vinck said a thick cloud of dust began to blanket the neighborhood, including the pool and plants in her backyard, forcing her and her husband to regularly scrub and wash out everything outdoors.
Vinck also noted that the HOA had seen increased costs due to the inundation of dust, including damage to their storm drains that had to be repaired and street sweeping leaving rivers of mud on the roads after they went by.
Tracy Sutherland, one of the organizers behind an effort to push back on the expansion of the landfill’s capacity, said her son regularly tells her about dust in the air and on the dugout benches during his baseball practice at a nearby high school.
“My son is practicing baseball and all around the dugouts and everything there’s a thick, thick dust,” Sutherland said. “I’m worried because my kid could possibly be breathing all these plumes of dirt that I see flying into this community.”
“What is my kid inhaling?”
Sutherland and several other residents said that before the landfill expands, they want to see air quality monitoring set up by a third party to figure out what the impact already is on their neighborhoods.
They’re not the only ones raising their voices, with hundreds of residents writing to county officials earlier this year with complaints about the proposed expansion of the dump and their existing living conditions.
“Our community is already experiencing significant negative impacts. These include ongoing air quality disturbances, persistent and strong odors, and debris from landfill operations obstructing La Pata Highway,” wrote San Juan Capistrano resident Monique Carroll. “These conditions pose risks not only to our health but also to our personal safety.”
“We did not vote for this,” wrote San Clemente residents Randall and Meghan Birnkrant. “It’s detrimental to our community, our health and it’s been acknowledged that effects cannot be mitigated. We say NO!”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
