The Latinos fighting this CA toxic waste dump
They've been living next to 15 million tons of toxic waste in California's ‘New Appalachia’ for decades. With little government support, the residents are fighting an uphill battle to stop a permit renewal.
This story is part of a series by Reckon and Next City examining how Black and Brown communities across the U.S. are working to hold corporations accountable for environmental injustices. Previously, we covered fights for accountability and reparative work led by the port communities around Alabama’s Africatown and Barrio Logan near San Diego.Two decades ago, a group of children on a class field trip from Kettleman City — a small Latino community nestled between rolling golden hills and vast green agricultural fields in California’s plentiful Central Valley — stood in awe inside the grounds of a local recycling plant.As the kids clawed through the dirt, a man told them curious tales about digging for fossils and quartz and responsibly collecting garbage to save the planet.“It was also exciting for us,” says Brian Cadena, now 23, who recalled answering quiz questions to win toys — tiny treasures for the children of immigrant farmers in one of the nation’s poorest regions. “Our parents didn’t have extra money for stuff like that, so I really liked getting something.”Cadena and his classmates came prepared, shouting out the names of recyclable materials: plastic, cardboard, paper, and tin. The man tossed out key chains, bracelets, stress balls, yo-yos, and pens, all bearing the logo of Waste Management, the nation’s largest landfill operator.Just 3.8 miles from Cadena’s home, Waste Management owns the 1,600-acre Kettleman Hills Facility, a hazardous waste site permitted to hold up to 15 million tons of toxic materials. The landfill is already filled with millions of tons of harmful substances, including mercury, lead, asbestos, and banned PCBs — chemicals known to cause birth defects, developmental delays, and liver damage. Waste Management and its Kettleman Hills Facility did not respond to requests for comment.“It was a whole lot of lies and propaganda,” says Cadena, now a community organizer for the San Francisco-based environmental justice group Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice. “I had no idea what was in that dirt.”The discovery of Waste Management’s deception soon after it opened in 1979 began a five-decade battle that mirrors environmental resistance nationwide in communities with similar characteristics: non-white, non-English-speaking, high unemployment, high poverty, and often in small and unincorporated areas that leave them without government representatives to champion their cause.“I’ve worked on literally hundreds and hundreds of projects,” Greenaction co-founder Bradley Angel says of his nationwide environmental justice work. “Around 90% of them are incinerators and landfills proposed in poor, rural communities of color with permission from the state.”The latest controversies go back to June 13, 2013, when the landfill’s most recent hazardous waste permit expired. Owing to a quirk in California law, the facility has carried on as normal since.That day is coming soon. The prospect has opened old wounds between environmental advocacy groups, the landfill, state agencies, and the residents of Kettleman City, all of whom played a part in the long and drawn-out permit renewal process.“It’s how the landfill and their friends in the California Department of Toxic Substance Control keep hazardous waste coming in while they work out a way to overcome new state laws and our civil rights agreement,” says Angel, referring to a 2016 landmark civil rights agreement that aimed to reduce pollution, improve health and safety, invest in community resources, enhance regulatory compliance, and increase resident involvement in environmental decision-making.“The whole thing — all the hiding, deception, and lies — never ends.”Kettleman City is unincorporated, meaning it is governed by the county rather than a municipal government that can make decisions based solely on residents’ needs.“The county supervisors here see Kettleman as a forgotten landscape of just simple farmers and farm laborers who don’t deserve the same amenities that the county seat has,” says Miguel Alatorre, a senior community organizer at Greenaction and the third generation of environmentalists in his family to advocate against the landfill. “We have 200 registered voters. Why would anyone pay attention to places like us anywhere in the country?”DTSC published Waste Management’s draft permit renewal in April; a public comment period ended on July 19 before an administrative review. Final approval is expected in March 2025.Despite DTSC claiming that the draft permit offers dozens of new environmental protections, local environmental advocacy groups argue it ignores SB673, a 2015 California environmental justice law promising greater protections to vulnerable communities when considering permit applications from hazardous waste landfills.Under that law, DTSC must weigh cumulative sources of pollution and community vulnerabilities, including poverty, unemployment, linguistic isolation, access to health care, and other health factors such as asthma, cardiovascular illness, and poor birth outcomes.“It’s in black and white that the state must consider every form of pollution being endured by residents,” Angel says. “It simply hasn’t, and you have to ask why not.”The DTSC did not respond to questions about why it allegedly failed to follow state law.Kettleman City ranks in the 92nd percentile for environmental vulnerability, according to California’s Environmental Protection Agency mapping tool, highlighting its disproportionate pollution burden. U.S. Census data shows nearly 30% of its residents live in poverty, more than double the state average of 12%.At the same time, DTSC says that unemployment, which is difficult to gauge in small immigrant farming towns, is higher than 82% of the state. Federal records show that no one in Kettleman City holds a bachelor’s degree, and its population has dropped from 1,245 in 2021 to 660.These challenges mirror those found throughout the Central Valley, often referred to as “New Appalachia” for its deep poverty, reminiscent of the economically distressed mountain region in eastern America. The nearby Latino community of Buttonwillow faces similar struggles as Kettleman City, with a hazardous landfill that’s operated unpermitted for over 18 years.The agency said in April that a permit denial would not likely reduce or eliminate the community’s vulnerabilities, claiming that the landfill’s permitted activities do not endanger human health.The state’s mapping tool shows that threats to residents include high levels of pesticide pollution, poor drinking water, home-based lead, asthma, cardiovascular disease, poverty, unemployment, lack of formal education, and weak protections for groundwater.California’s reputation for environmental justice was created partly by the eco-friendly administration of Gov. Jerry Brown, who in 2015 passed SB673 and required the Department of Toxic Substances Control to fully implement the law by 2018. While DTSC has made some progress, such as reviewing past landfill violations and requiring hazardous waste facilities to self-assess risks, it has yet to establish rules to monitor cumulative pollution effects.Advocates argue this is not the only instance of non-compliance; in 2016, DTSC signed a civil rights agreement to settle a U.S. EPA lawsuit challenging the expansion of Kettleman City’s hazardous waste landfill by 50%.Greenaction and local community group El Pueblo Para el Aire y Agua Limpia filed an administrative civil rights complaint against DTSC. The U.S. EPA accepted the complaint, finding it met many of the agency’s nondiscrimination regulations. The EPA did not rule on the complaint before the parties signed a civil rights agreement in August 2016 after seven months of mediationThe agreement settled the complaint, requiring DTSC to comply with civil rights in its regulatory processes and implement the cumulative pollution element of SB673 no later than Jan. 1, 2018.“This is what they’re dragging their feet on, because they know that if we have those criteria in place, they’re not going to be able to permit the state’s hazardous waste landfills,” said Angel. “It would all fail.”DTSC is informally using CalEnviroScreen, an online mapping tool that combines demographic and pollution data, which can calculate a vulnerability score for any location using cumulative sources of pollution.A 2021 DTSC draft framework of how the law might work notes that a community with scores above the 60th percentile would be considered vulnerable. But DSTC has not yet established an internal policy of what would happen during the permitting process should a community exceed a certain level of vulnerability, according to the agency’s SB673 implementation plan.Kettleman City’s location at the junction of Highway 41 and Interstate 5 — the country’s busiest interstate — brings high pollution levels. Contaminated water is still a problem for the community despite some improvements in recent years. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural fields have created extreme levels of pesticide pollution. There’s even a human waste compost facility and multiple shipping facilities, like FedEx and UPS.Advocates for Kettleman City have fought for decades to counter environmental threats, using lawsuits and protests to raise awareness and engage state and federal politicians. In 2007-08, 20 children in the area were born with congenital disabilities, including five with cleft lip or palate. Three children died. A state investigation found no clear cause, with a health official calling it a “statistical anomaly.” In 2012, the U.S. EPA dropped a civil rights case related to hazardous waste sites, including the Kettleman Hills Facility, after 17 years.Under Trump, the federal EPA approved Waste Management’s 50% landfill expansion in 2019, frustrating residents like Angel, who see a pattern of neglect across generations.“They are gaslighting us over and over throughout decades,” said Cadena, referring to the contrasting outcomes between Kettleman City residents and KHF. “It’s generational.”There have also been vital victories for residents. Since 2017, community advocates have secured improved air and water monitoring supported by state grants. In 2018, the town’s campaign against diesel emissions saw the state help with educational efforts and “No Diesel Idling.” The biggest victory coming out of the civil rights agreement was convincing the state to replace the town’s aging and unreliable water treatment system and water source.While these concessions are often a good way to compromise, achieving justice through civil rights laws and how they are applied across states and federal agencies can be complex.In preparation for publishing Waste Management’s draft permit, DTSC hired the prominent San Francisco-based environmental protection law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP (where CalEPA’s Deputy Secretary for Law Enforcement and General Counsel Linda Lye, was a partner from 2002 to 2010). The firm’s civil rights report analyzed whether the process and subsequent draft permit decision were consistent with EPA and California civil rights laws.“Altshuler found no direct evidence of discriminatory intent or animus against Latinos or limited English proficiency Spanish-speakers,” noted the October 2023 DTSC report summary. Altshuler also concluded that the impacts of renewing the Kettleman Hills Facility permit would unlikely be adverse enough to be unlawful,” per DTSC. The law firm did not respond to requests for comment.“Those lawyers don’t live here; they don’t see the pollution and the things people have to deal with,” said Angel. “They relied on interviews with DTSC employees and its scientific analyses, which it admitted to not independently verifying.”Angel also said Altshuler did not talk to Kettleman City residents, El Pueblo or Greenaction before completing its report. Altshuler did not respond to questions about its reporting process.The state’s mapping tool shows that threats to residents include high levels of pesticide pollution, poor drinking water, home-based lead, asthma, cardiovascular disease, poverty, unemployment, lack of formal education, and weak protections for groundwater.While Altshuler’s analysis focuses specifically on Kettleman City, a broader inspection of hazardous landfill data in California shows that around 55% of the state’s permitted hazardous waste facilities are in or near disadvantaged communities, according to a 2023 DTSC report. That bears out in independent studies.Decades of research, including the 2021 report Toxic Waste and Race in the Twenty-First Century, has drawn a direct connection between hazardous waste facilities and communities of color. Published in the Journal of Society and Environment, the study notes that over half of the residents living within labor1.86 miles of toxic waste sites in the U.S. are people of color. Supporting this, the Center for Effective Government found that these individuals are nearly twice as likely as white residents to live near industrial facilities’ fenceline zones, which bring increased air pollution, safety hazards, and health risks.Kettleman City’s landfill follows a pattern alarmingly similar to the controversial 1980s Cerrell Report, a government-funded study that advised siting hazardous waste facilities in vulnerable communities to prevent resistance. As Angel observes, this strategy persists today, targeting low-income communities of color and trying to build goodwill in the community.Some residents believe the company even employs locals to push a favorable image of the landfill on social media, suggesting that toxic waste is safe and the landfill is a good neighbor.“That’s the level of infiltration and propaganda they are capable of,” added Alatorre, who has spent most of his life trying to defy Waste Management and the government forces that enable it.While at high school, he and other kids dumped trash in front of U.S. EPA officials at an event. “This is what it’s like to be dumped on,” Alatorre told them then. “The next day during our weekly mile run, my gym teacher taunted me by repeatedly saying ‘si se puede’ as I struggled to keep up.”The phrase — meaning “yes, it can be done”— is the motto of the United Farmers Union. It has also been adopted by other labor unions and civil rights groups and used as a rallying cry at immigration protests.“This is about much more than complicated legal reports, numbers and lawsuits,” Alatorre says. “If we even have one, we can’t let this be our future.”
