The dirty secret of trash: Illegal dumping in the Southern California desert
Imperfect Paradise
LAist Studios
4.5 • 535 Ratings
🗓️ 30 July 2025
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Diapers, concrete and construction debris. The open secret about trash in Southern California is that some of the waste people assume is being properly handled is actually being disposed of on remote sites in the California high desert. The state agency in charge of waste, CalRecycle, has said the scale of illegal dumping has become an emergency. LAist science reporter Jacob Margolis investigated several illicit sites in the Antelope Valley. His investigation raises questions about illegal dumping practices, accountability and the toll it all takes on nearby residents.
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Transcript
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| 0:33.4 | Hey, this is in Perfect Paradise. |
| 0:35.7 | I'm Antonia Cerejito. |
| 0:39.4 | There's this one chore all Americans carry out week after week. At my house, it's my husband who wheels out the three trash bins we have every Friday morning. And then that garbage is sort of forgotten. We never think about it |
| 0:57.1 | again. Americans actually throw out almost five pounds of trash per person every single day. Multiply that |
| 1:05.1 | by the nation's population. And we're talking almost 1.6 billion pounds of trash. So the trash does have to go somewhere. |
| 1:14.6 | And a lot of us assume that garbage is disposed of responsibly, like at a regional landfill. |
| 1:20.7 | But what if huge piles of it filled with all kinds of waste, from diapers to concrete, to even construction debris. |
| 1:29.5 | All got mixed up and thrown away together, but not in a landfill. |
| 1:38.0 | That's exactly what's happening at three places in Anilope Valley. |
| 1:42.6 | Hundreds of thousands of tons of waste accumulating and forming massive, often multiple |
| 1:48.4 | feet high piles across the desert. |
| 1:50.9 | In some cases, not far from people's homes. |
| 1:55.8 | Things have gotten so bad with the level of illegal dumping there that back in February, |
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