Kern County closes trash storage operation
Law enforcement authorities have closed down a trash storage operation in Kern County linked to a recycling firm already under investigation for allegedly violating health and safety codes in Long Beach and the Riverside County community of Blythe.
Kern County sheriff’s deputies and waste management officials said Friday that Mission Fiber Group, which sells recyclables to Asian markets, had not been granted a permit to stockpile refuse at the site discovered Wednesday near the northeastern border of Edwards Air Force Base, about 80 miles north of Los Angeles.
“We put the skids on them after they’d dumped 15 loads in the dead of night,” said Deputy Dennis Gagnon. “The company said it was paper product to be used as mulch, but most of it is plastic debris.”
In October, a 60-foot mountain of recyclables collected by the company caught fire in Long Beach under what authorities say were suspicious circumstances. Under orders to clean up the site by Friday, the company was expected to complete the job of hauling that charred and soggy material to local dumps.
The company has also been ordered to remove a far larger heap of trash from a seven-acre site about a mile south of the Blythe Chamber of Commerce.
On Friday, a Riverside County Superior Court judge scheduled a hearing on the matter for Jan. 7.
Officials estimate that the mounds in Long Beach and Blythe were made of 15,000 tons of material.
Mission Fiber obtains the material, a mixture of recyclables and trash, then ships it to markets in China and the Philippines where it is sorted and processed.
The material began backing up over the summer, and the piles began to accumulate on land the company leases in Long Beach and owns in Blythe.
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