Soil Samples: Compton, CA

January 13, 2002

According to the CIWMB SWIS facility database, Compton's landfill, at W. Alondra and McKinley, is an unpermitted, closed landfill containing inert industrial waste.

According to Emmett, who grew up in the neighborhood and lives right next door to it now, with nothing to separate him from the field but a row of powerlines, it was once a marsh. He remembers it as a dump too, and he especially remembers that it was closed for dumping, back in 1977. That was a story. A baseball diamond was put in, and the neighborhood kids had been playing on it for a while, when all of a sudden the diamond was ripped out and the big yellow gate appeared, padlocks and all. Mark, another neighbor, thinks there was something with soil samples.

Now, it's as parched and dusty as all of Los Angeles, a fallow field carefully locked up while the waste plays a shut-out game against the neighborhood. Four times a year, someone from the County of Los Angeles stops by to make an inspection—presumably to ascertain that the waste products aren't trying to walk off the field.

Marijke Rijsberman

More Information
Map of the LA Metropolitan Area
SWIS DB Entry for Compton's Landfill