"L.A. County’s Chiquita Canyon Landfill has spewed high levels of toxic gases and climate super-pollutants for years. Yet local residents’ pleas for help from state officials remain unanswered."
"Five years ago, Elizabeth Jeffords stood at the top of a pretty, tree-lined street in Castaic, California, admiring the house she and her husband just bought. She loved how the two-story house, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles, looked out onto the Sierra Pelona Mountains. She loved how it sat at the top of a mile-long hill she could use as a personal track. She imagined filling its spacious rooms with the laughter of loved ones and the children she hoped to have.
But soon after moving in, the former track runner, now 46, began to feel fatigued, dizzy, disoriented and winded. Jeffords grew up with asthma but never had an attack until she moved to Castaic, a small town with a large Latino population. She started getting migraines and vomiting out of the blue. She noticed odd bumps on her face and body and couldn’t quench her thirst no matter how much water she drank. Over the next two years, her symptoms gradually worsened, until she regularly woke up with nosebleeds, gasping for air, worried she might die in her sleep.
Jeffords, who often wears oversize black glasses that accent her auburn-tinged hair, saw every type of doctor she could think of and spent thousands of dollars on tests. No one could figure out what ailed her. She always kept her windows open until August 2023, when a putrid, chemical odor roused her in the middle of the night.
The next morning, Jeffords saw on social media that many of her neighbors had complained about the foul smell to the local air district. On her front door, she found a notice from the Chiquita Canyon Landfill offering her and other residents a free air filter."
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