Landfill Pollution Could Threaten Water, Wine in Napa Valley

Napa Valley, a famous wine region in northern California, is facing pollution risks from a local landfill. 

The Clover Flat Landfill, which has been operating since the 1960s, is located near two streams that flow into the Napa River. According to a news report by The Guardian, the landfill may be contributing to pollution runoff into the nearby waterways. 

The Napa River is an important source of water for local agriculture, including vineyards, as well as for recreation.

“The Napa valley is amongst the most high-value agricultural land in the country,” Geoff Ellsworth, the former mayor of St. Helena, a city in Napa County, and a former employee at the landfill, told The Guardian. “If there’s a contamination issue, the economic ripples are significant.”

Emails and reports from former employees and regulators have raised concerns over contamination from the landfill and waste company Upper Valley Disposal Services (UVDS), both of which were once owned by the Pestoni family, according to The Guardian.

As Waste Dive reported in 2022, the landfill and waste disposal service companies were acquired by Texas-based Waste Connections.

Christina Pestoni, the former chief operating officer for Upper Valley Disposal & Recycling and current director of government affairs for Waste Connections, previously shared a statement contradicting the claims made against the landfill and the waste disposal company, asserting that the companies complied with regulations and operated at the “highest environmental standards.” The statement specified that no waste from the Clover Flat Landfill reached or impacted the Napa River.

In December 2023, a group of 23 employees and former employees of the landfill and UVDS filed a complaint to the California Environmental Protection Agency over “impacts from concerning and unlawful environmental practices at UVDS/CFL” with complaints about treatment of Latino workers, threats of retaliation, exposure to untreated garbage wastewater, and ghost piping — which was described in the filed complaint as unmapped piping to divert wastewater and leachate into public waterways.

The complaint also raised concerns over per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) that were found in samples from the landfill’s leachate and groundwater and waste and compost fires that have broken out at the landfill, according to documents obtained by The New Lede, a reporting initiative from Environmental Working Group (EWG).

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“Both UVDS and [CFL] have no business being in the grape-growing areas or at the top of the watershed of Napa county,” Frank Leeds, operator of an organic vineyard near UVDS, told The Guardian. “There are homes and vineyards all around that are affected by them.”

Eileen White, executive officer of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, told The Guardian that the potential environmental impacts liked to the landfill and UVDS are under investigation.