At the Chiquita Canyon Landfill here in greater Los Angeles, a disquieting smell—not to mention strange medical issues—has been tormenting local neighbors for years. But there is “no simple solution,” we read, “because what’s driving it is something buried beneath the waste: a complex and dangerous chemical reaction whose very nature is in dispute.”

The side-effects of that complex chemical reaction include elevated, sometimes “scorching,” underground temperatures and the production of Dantean landscape scenes above: “In early 2022 a closed section in the landfill’s northwest corner began overheating, eventually reaching temperatures above 200F (93C). That’s nearly 40% hotter than the federal EPA’s standard for landfill operations. As the waste slowly cooked, it belched out toxic gases, elevating nearby levels of hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide and benzene, which can damage DNA and cause leukemia after enough exposure. Large amounts of leachate (basically, trash juice) built up and bubbled, boiled and even shot into the air like geysers.” The belch as landscape phenomenon.

[…] But what continues to interest me about this overall problem, and why I’m posting about landfills again, is something more abstract than just waste-management practices or oxygen-content regulations in the disposal industry: we continue to create things we don’t know how to get rid of, objects whose attempted destruction only empowers them and materials whose burial makes them harder to control.

— Geoff Manaugh, Uncontrolled Remains, BLDGBLOG, 2025