The Riverside County Department of Environmental Health said there have been no issues since Corona-based El Sobrante Landfill began taking in millions of pounds of rotten food from a Boyle Heights warehouse that caught fire in June.
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“The waste that they’re bringing in is not hazardous — it is food waste — so that’s something that is assessed at the site before it’s even transported,” Sandi Salas, a spokesperson for the department, said. “As far as smells and odors, we have not had any smells or odors that we are aware of that the community has been raising concern over.”
Waste Management, which operates the landfill, requested a waiver to allow the company to exceed its daily limit of 16,054 tons of waste, its weekly limit of 70,000 tons of waste and its vehicle limits set by the county. That request was made after Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency in response to the Lineage Logistics cold-storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights.
Salas said, though the waiver is good through September 30, the landfill has yet to exceed its limits, according to data the company provides to the county. She added there have been no concerns about pests at the site during regular inspections.
“We feel that the residents should not be impacted by anything that’s happening with the waste coming in or the waiver that was approved,” Salas said. “If anything were to change, then we would possibly discontinue the waiver or stop the waste from coming in if there was any kind of health concern or safety protocol measure that came up.”
Waste Management did not immediately respond to a request for comment by The Riverside Record.
As of Monday, Lineage said in a news release it had removed 80% of the estimated 85 million pounds of food waste from the area since the cleanup started in early July, a portion of which was taken to the Corona site.
Lineage shared the release with The Record but did not respond to follow-up questions.
Since the fire was extinguished, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has issued several fines to the company for unsanitary conditions and pest control violations, and residents have launched hundreds of complaints about strong odors and rat sightings, according to the Los Angeles Times.
To mitigate the rotting food’s smell and the presence of pests, Lineage said in its press release that workers have applied odor neutralizer to the waste multiple times per day, immediately seal roll-off bins containing waste and have expanded pest-control efforts to trap flies and rodents.
Lineage has until August 13 to remove all the food waste from the site, according to an executive order issued by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
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