Toxic Underground Fires Are Spreading at California Landfills (spokesman.com)
- Reference: 0184914278
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/08/09/2232249/toxic-underground-fires-are-spreading-at-california-landfills
- Source link: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/06/toxic-underground-fires-are-spreading-at-californi/
[2]Alternate URL here .] "Few imagined the calamity that would follow.
"Somehow the landfill's pollution control system introduced oxygen below, causing decades-old waste to rapidly decompose, generating intense heat and eventually widespread smoldering, federal and state environmental agencies say."
> The broiling temperatures released toxic gases and hazardous liquid waste that bubbled up to the surface. Residents living in the nearby communities of Val Verde and Castaic have phoned in thousands of complaints about stench and lived with nausea, dizziness and trouble breathing. The underground fire has tripled in size since first confirmed in 2023. Recently a towering mound of landfill garbage perched on the hillside has warped and threatens to trigger an avalanche of garbage and chemical-filled liquid, or leachate, according to the California water board...
>
> At first, local officials described the problem in Los Angeles County at Chiquita Canyon landfill as a rare, even unprecedented disaster. But since then, California regulators have learned that at least two other landfills are wrestling with high temperatures and similar conditions. Scorching temperatures have overtaken at least 30 acres of El Sobrante landfill near Corona in Riverside County. Excessive heat and emissions have also been detected at Avenal landfill in the San Joaquin Valley.
>
> The discoveries raise an unsettling question: How many landfills are dealing with these disasters? Are they a broader problem in California...? Chiquita Canyon closed at the end of the 2024 and stopped accepting new garbage. But the fire is expected to last for years as it continues to consume decades-old trash.
"Underground landfill fires are complex, nearly impossible to extinguish once they break out," according to the article. "As regulators search for a solution, residents find themselves struggling with the wait."
Some residents have worn gas masks — or sold their homes.
[1] https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/aug/06/toxic-underground-fires-are-spreading-at-californi/
[2] https://www.newstribune.com/news/2026/aug/07/toxic-underground-fires-spreading-at-california/
Idiocracy (Score:2)
> and threatens to trigger an avalanche of garbage
I've seen this in a movie, I believe.
Maybe some average guy from the 90s will step out of a time capsule, fix the retarded state of the US, and then become president.
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I've seen way too much stuff in that movie first.
Centralia, Pennsylvania anyone? (Score:2)
I couldn't help but be reminded of this city in reading this. I know they are not necessarily the same, but the fires there were reported to be started in, you guessed it, a landfill. Those fires started in 1962 and are expected to last another century. Granted, that fire hit an exposed coal vein, which set off a chain of events, so let's just hope there are no combustible materials near these and that they do, in fact, burn out in a couple of years.
A US thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Landfilling is largely a North American practice today, while the EU has systematically phased it out.
North America:
The Default Method: Roughly half of all municipal waste in the US and Canada still goes straight into landfills.
Abundant Land & Decentralization: Vast geography historically made burying trash cheap, and waste policies vary widely by state rather than a strict federal ban.
The European Union:
Strict Bans: The EU's Landfill Directive requires member states to reduce municipal waste sent to landfills to 10% or less by 2035. Many countries have already banned burying untreated household waste entirely.
Energy Recovery: Waste that cannot be recycled is routed to modern Waste-to-Energy (WtE) facilities, which burn it under strict emission controls to generate electricity and district heating, leaving behind only minimal inert ash.
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Well, we could include several third world countries. Where your "recycled" PCs are sent and stirred in open fires by children trying to recover a few grams of gold.
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... and 10% is shipped to landfills in the 3rd world.
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> The European Union:
> Strict Bans: The EU's Landfill Directive requires member states to reduce municipal waste sent to landfills to 10% or less by 2035.
Translation: The European Union Directive, hasn’t actually done a fucking thing yet to prevent the 50% or more going into their landfills. Meaning they should stop fucking bragging like they have.
Commitments made by politicians who will be retired or dead by the deadline, don’t mean shit. So stop prancing around pretending they do. Results matter. Not promises. Making landfills illegal with no real solution, merely turns waste creators into criminals. Which you will likely tax to “f
Foresight called; it wants it's consequences back. (Score:2)
Who knew that this would be the outcome of consumerism? Much like car culture is the outcome of vehicles.
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> Who knew that this would be the outcome of consumerism? Much like car culture is the outcome of vehicles.
It isn't. Car culture is the result of legislation.
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Anywhere that sells batteries really. I've dropped them off at Batteries+ and auto mechanics.
Fixing this is not at all urgent (Score:2)
None of the managers or responsible officials live near by so the stench, pollution and health issues are not as important as cutting costs to increase profits and so get that end of year bonus.
"Toxic" ? How Toxic ? (Score:2)
Just how "toxic" are we talking here ?
Did they suggest that women and men are different and enjoy doing different things, or something outrageous and disgusting like that ?
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Oh god no, nothing so awful as that. This is just smelly poison in the air, not something to get worked up about.
Hold up.. (Score:2)
Isn't this standard practice by the US military in foreign states for dealing with their garbage at military bases?
Can't be that bad then, residents should toughen up. /s
LOL (Score:2)
Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California was built on a garbage landfill. Hilariously, during some of the first concerts there, at that moment when everyone raises a lighter at the start of their favorite bands set... there were some ignitions of the methane leaking from the landfill. So they had to go back and do an expensive retrofit of an massive pipe network under the (outdoor) amphitheater to vent the methane to someplace safe. Yeah, that's the same place I was ushering a Grateful Dead conce
Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Mixed waste landfill, much like mixed sewage are such a colossal waste of potential recycling. Turns the waste streams from possibly easy to recycle at some point, to practically impossible. If we were planning to extend our civilisation much longer at this technological level, stopping mixed waste landfill and mixed sewage systems should be right up there with CO2 emissions.
I don't think it's a realistic plan though, praying to AI god to save us is more realistic. Throw this on the pile of things which AI needs to fix, pretty soon.
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If you're right then the fix is just to pay people to sort it all, don't need an AI for that. The disappointed oligarchs will just switch it off when most of the solutions involve just paying folks enough to do whatever needs done.
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> If you're right then the fix is just to pay people to sort it all
Probably true here in the USA. In countries with education and class, people can be convinced to sort their own trash.
Another partial fix would be to reduce the waste to begin with. A lot of things are grossly overpackaged. They go into a box good more than enough for shipping, then they go into a case for shipping just to contain them. All packing materials should be genuinely recyclable (not just stamped with a triangle) or home compostable. And every company should be responsible for the disposal of any
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> but tariffs are bad I am told ...
They're bad when they're chaotic. Some tariffs are bad and others are good. The world is a lumpy place. If we wanted to address this problem we could have done it with tariffs designed specifically to equalize cost of production to make it unprofitable to use slave labor or ignore the impact to the environment, but we clearly don't want to fix it.
Re:Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:4, Informative)
> but tariffs are bad I am told ...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hoover signed the bill against the advice of many senior economists, yielding to pressure from his party and business leaders. Intended to bolster domestic employment and manufacturing, the tariffs instead deepened the Depression because the U.S.'s trading partners retaliated with tariffs of their own, leading to U.S. exports and global trade plummeting. Economists and historians widely regard the act as a policy misstep, and it remains a cautionary example of protectionist policy in modern economic debates.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act
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> "policy misstep" and "cautionary example" != consensus that tariffs are a bad thing in all situations
Tariffs are a scalpel and should not be mistaken for a sledgehammer.
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so we are only optimizing for economic output consumption - f*** the planet
thanks for being honest Archie.
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Explain how the tariffs are pro-environment, not in theory but practice since liberation day, especially in the face of the other environmental policy changes from the admin.
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I'm curious as to what the "pollution control" measure are that the article alludes to being the possible reason for the fires ignition....
What are these measure....should they be stopped/altered?
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> I'm curious as to what the "pollution control" measure are that the article alludes to
I don't know but I'd guess it's a landfill methane capture system.
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> I'm curious as to what the "pollution control" measure are that the article alludes to being the possible reason for the fires ignition....
> What are these measure....should they be stopped/altered?
You're overthinking this.
The top of the blame flowchart starts with: "If state has democrat governor: blame democrat governor; Goto end."
"Blame the environmentalists" is several layers down in the other branches of the flowchart.
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> If you're right then the fix is just to pay people to sort it all, don't need an AI for that. The disappointed oligarchs will just switch it off when most of the solutions involve just paying folks enough to do whatever needs done.
Actually AI sorts everything very well.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTLqbc5U03o
Re: Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:1)
I think brain's point is how that would have been trivial before it went into the landfill where it became the toxic soup it is today.
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> praying to AI god to save us is more realistic. Throw this on the pile of things which AI needs to fix, pretty soon.
Yeah we can always have an LLM discuss recycling based on the word soup it has ingested from the internet, maybe make a video defying all the laws of physics showing recycling of a mixed waste landfill, and consume a lot of electricity in the process.
Breakthroughs on the horizon (Score:2)
>> praying to AI god to save us is more realistic. Throw this on the pile of things which AI needs to fix, pretty soon.
> Yeah we can always have an LLM discuss recycling based on the word soup it has ingested from the internet, maybe make a video defying all the laws of physics showing recycling of a mixed waste landfill, and consume a lot of electricity in the process.
There are several breakthroughs on the near horizon that will help.
First up is [1]Commonwealth Fusion [cfs.energy], based on a technology breakthrough in 2011 is planning to have net gain sometime in 2027 (delayed from "latter part of 2026"), and is so certain of the results that they are building a commercial fusion plant in Virginia... and have already purchased (IIRC) the land and are in the permitting stage. ( [2]More info [reddit.com].
Second up is [3]Tesla Robotics [tesla.com], which is putting the transformer model into a physical robot, so that it
[1] https://cfs.energy/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/fusion/comments/1qkx95k/hello_from_commonwealth_fusion_systems_heres_what/
[3] https://www.tesla.com/AI
Re:Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Landfills seem like a bad idea in general, to me. It seems like doing something most would not do, dig a hole and toss their trash in it, scaled at country level. But I'm biased, since we phased them out last century I've never really "known" them. We recycle what can be recycled, food waste is used to produce bio fuel, and whatever is left is incinerated and the heat generated used for water borne heating or electricity production depending on season.
Apparently, landfills produce more potent greenhouse gases (i.e. methane), so even without CO2 capture incineration is supposedly still a climate win.
Re:Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:4, Funny)
> It seems like doing something most would not do, dig a hole and toss their trash in it, scaled at country level.
This is true. Most would not do that. Historically, people found a hole to throw their refuse into so they wouldn't have to dig one.
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We phased out landfills last century? What planet are you from?
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Burning things doesn't make the things go away. What is being done with the waste from the burning? Burying it in a landfill?
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If you're in Europe, then what you did wasn't to phase them out, but to move them to other countries. In places like Japan, landfills have been used to create more living space for that crowded archipelago.
And while methane may be a more potent greenhouse gas, it's also a potent fuel that can be captured at the landfill.
Re:Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
We are already stopping this. In my state when I run to the landfill I'm required to drop electronic items off at one station, chemicals at another, recylcing like wood or plastic at yet another. Only when I am down to the misc crap not worth recycling or salvaging or handling differently for safety purposes am I allowed to go dump it in the actual landfill.
One of the catalysts for this was Lithium Ion Batteries and how they were causing huge fires at landfills. It's been true of chemicals for decades.
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> I've never heard of anyone in modern times having to haul their own track to a dump.
The list of things you are familiar with is far, far shorter than the converse. It's unclear why you want us all to know this, but you make sure to point it out at every opportunity.
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> I've never heard of anyone in modern times having to haul their own trask to a dump.
I'm in Canada but I'm pretty sure it is not uncommon that the trash collectors take what is in the rollout bins but if you have construction material or large amounts of ad-hoc waste you typically haul it to the dump yourself or pay someone to do it. I'd think even where you live there is some limit to what the garbage men will take?
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> If not where do you life they don't do this in the US? Are you somewhere extremely rural?
> I've never heard of anyone in modern times having to haul their own track to a dump.
It's very common outside of suburban and urban areas. I like in a large suburban/urban area and I have to go to the dump for certain kinds of waste (batteries, UPSes, eWaste, etc). We have municipal compost/recycling/yard waste/trash.
Also pretty common in mountainous areas to take your waste either to a transfer station or a dump.
I have relatives in Minnesota, in the Twin Cities. They have to buy private trash and recycling service. The end result is every week 3-4 different "brands" of recycling trucks go
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Sometimes you have things too big for the can. Sometimes you have too much. Sometimes you have something special.
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A big part of it is making things easier to sort and recycle. Packaging should be made entirely of recycled cardboard if possible, so it can all be thrown in the waste paper bin. No need for foam inside.
Similarly plastic bottles should have labels designed to be removed by machines. They have them in Japan, with the label only glued in one vertical strip in one place. I'm not sure exactly how they do it, maybe it's a solvent or maybe it's mechanical, like rubber wheels that tear it off (removal by hand is e
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AI can only rearrange configurations already within its training data, it cannot come up with any new fundamental principles. It is not some Magic Pixie Dust no matter how Silicon Valley spins it. And asking it to solve any of these problems "realistically" probably means its "realistic" solution is to euthanize all humans.
Re: Landfills are such a bad idea (Score:2)
Most of the trash is too mixed and low quality to recycle in any economical way. The metal has been removed because its valuable and the rest is simply not worth recycling. The answer is to incinerate it. People have this idea that incinerators are like that smoky bonfire that Jim Bob sets up in his backyard to burn his yard waste and that old couch he wants to get rid of. Modern incineration is super hot and the gas is scrubbed. Clean as can get. Nothing but CO2 and water vapor, and the ash is super compac