LOS ANGELES — It has been almost a year of residents living near the Chiquita Canyon Landfill dealing with a noxious odor in their community. Officials have traced it back to the landfill.

An investigation from the South Coast Air Quality Management District found an underground chemical reaction was causing high temperatures leading to the odor.

"I have four kids, so they want to go outside," said lifelong Castaic resident Karina McArhen. "But every single time they go outside, they get instant headaches or their eyes burn, or their nose starts to hurt. And our allergies start to kick up."

As residents continue to share their frustrations, the agencies say they have been pushing for operational changes from the company Waste Connections, which owns the landfill.

In November, a multi-agency task force led by the EPA was formed to address concerns over the operation of the landfill. Since then, the agencies involved have conducted multiple inspections at the landfill.

As a result, this past February, the EPA issued a Unilateral Administrative Order, which requires the landfill company to create a plan to comply with the law and properly manage, treat and dispose of hazardous waste. It also requires them to take steps to mitigate the odors coming from the landfill. 

"The community is highly impacted by noxious odors that's sickening the community. Also, the landfill is producing a lot of leachate and that leachate, some of it has hazardous waste in it," said Thanne Berg with the EPA. 

At a meeting held by the EPA at the Castaic Middle School, the agency noted that a month has passed since the UAO was issued and said not enough had changed.

"They weren't moving quickly enough to address the issues that we were identifying," said Berg.

That's why, during the meeting, they announced they were escalating the situation and creating another task force.

"It is a multi-agency coordination group that will be there on a daily basis to help direct the facility to do the things they need to do in order to stabilize the situation and ensure that human health is protected," said Berg.

Unlike the last one, Berg explained, this coordination effort will have 10 to 15 EPA employees on-site at the landfill. 

Steve Cassulo, district manager for the Chiquita Canyon Landfill, said in a statement: "We welcome the continued discussion with, and support from, all of our federal, state, regional and local regulatory authorities, as well as any additional resources from the State of California to deal with the elevated temperature landfill (ETLF) event. Last month, Chiquita created an Incident Action Plan and team at the landfill to lead the onsite coordination of mitigation efforts. This team has been working closely with the EPA-led multi-agency taskforce to bring about a swift resolution to the issue.”

Despite the efforts from the agencies, Berg says this issue is going to take a while to fix. 

"The reaction will likely go on for years, but there are things that we will make sure that facility does to ensure that the community is not impacted by that reaction," said Berg. 

She added that, at the moment, making sure the landfill does make those changes is their priority. 

For McArhen, the task force is welcomed, and she hopes the problem could be fixed a lot sooner, as her family already looking into moving. And that is not financially possible. 

"I don't want to deal with this for another couple of years, but if starting from now, they're actually doing the steps necessary to get that the hazardous waste in our air and all of that to stop, then that's great because at least the value of our home, if it goes down now, it'll at least go back up," she said.

McArhen hopes that this prompts some changes at the landfill to protect her family’s health and the community she has grown up with.