EPA gives OK for Kettleman Hills restart

The U.S. EPA has given its permission for Waste Management‘s Kettleman Hills hazardous waste landfill to restart operations after its cleanup of cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the site. But the company must also continue searching for the source of other PCBs and remove them, according to news reports regarding the landfill in south-central California.

Kettleman City residents have long maintained that PCBs from the 1,600-acre landfill are responsible for increases in birth defects in the area. Waste Management officials have asserted that there is no evidence linking the landfill to the birth-defects trend.

In 1988, the Kettleman Hills landfill was the site of one of the largest and earliest failures involving a geomembrane sheet.

For more information: www.epa.gov/region9/kettleman