【ANN NEWS, LOS ANGELES】 A “stench crisis” that has persisted for more than two months is now spreading from Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights to Simi Valley, dozens of miles away.
In June, a fire broke out at a large refrigerated warehouse in Boyle Heights, leaving tens of millions of pounds of meat, fish and other food products to spoil after refrigeration was lost. After more than two months of cleanup, warehouse operator Lineage Logistics recently announced that about 88 million pounds of waste had been removed from the site.
However, just as Boyle Heights residents finally appeared close to escaping the putrid odor that had plagued them throughout the summer, another group of Southern California residents began smelling the same thing.
According to the Los Angeles Times on August 31, large quantities of rotting food removed from the warehouse were transported to the Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center in Ventura County for disposal. Nearby residents subsequently filed repeated complaints about an unbearable putrid odor in the air. Residents of the nearby Big Sky community said the stench at times was so strong that they thought a wild animal had died nearby.
Big Sky Homeowners Association President George Khalatian described the smell in the air as being like “rotten eggs or rotting meat.” His home is about two miles from the landfill, but he could still smell the strong odor. Another local resident, Pradepa Nachimuthu, told ABC7 that it smelled like fish or something had died, and the situation had become so severe that they even began asking themselves: “Should we still be living here?” Some residents said they could smell the odor as soon as they opened their doors and had also noticed a significant increase in flies. The smell was particularly noticeable when winds picked up in the afternoon.
The source of the stench can be traced back to the June 17 fire at Lineage’s large refrigerated warehouse in Boyle Heights. The fire burned for about a week. Although the blaze was eventually extinguished, what truly created difficulties for the surrounding community was the enormous quantity of food inside the warehouse that had lost refrigeration. Tens of millions of pounds of meat, fish and other food products began to rot, with the stench spreading into surrounding neighborhoods and attracting large numbers of flies and rats.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District said it has received more than 4,900 odor complaints related to the warehouse since July 12, with many residents describing persistent smells of decay, sourness and garbage in the air. Regulators have issued dozens of notices of violation to Lineage. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass previously said what Boyle Heights residents were facing was no longer merely an “inconvenience,” but a public health crisis requiring urgent action.
To address the problem as quickly as possible, regulators ordered Lineage to accelerate the cleanup, at one point requiring the removal of at least 8.8 million pounds of rotting food per week. Lineage said the entire cleanup operation is expected to cost more than $100 million.
On August 29, air quality regulators inspected the site and confirmed that the large amount of food waste inside the warehouse had been completely removed. However, the cleanup is not yet fully complete. The company must continue removing other debris within the required timeframe and conduct high-pressure washing and disinfection of the large freezer areas.
But as truckloads of rotting food were hauled away from Boyle Heights, the problem shifted to the disposal sites. Some of the waste was transported to the Simi Valley Landfill and Recycling Center. After receiving complaints from residents, Ventura County air pollution control officials went to the site to investigate on August 11.
Inspectors confirmed that the foul odor reported by residents was indeed coming from the landfill and specifically noted that it was associated with decomposing food waste being dumped there. Regulators subsequently issued a notice of violation to Waste Management California, which operates the landfill, requiring it to restore operations to conditions that would not create a public nuisance.
Local residents said they had not previously known that rotting food from the fire-damaged Boyle Heights warehouse would be transported to a landfill near their homes. Some residents now say they have not noticed any significant foul odors over the past few days, but Ventura County authorities continue to monitor the situation and respond to residents’ complaints.
