Why It’s Time to Decommission the Clover Flat Landfill in Napa County, by Anne Wheaton and Geoff Ellsworth

July 19, 2024

​In the steep and rugged hills atop Napa Valley's headwaters sits a 60-year-old landfill with a checkered past and a litany of environmental violations, fires, employee complaints, lawsuits and neighbors relentlessly pleading with regulators and Napa County officials to be heard. Clover Flat Landfill, owned for the past 60 years by the local Pestoni Family, seemed impervious to scrutiny by elected officials as they have held no-bid government contracts for over six decades. (Photo: Aerial view of Clover Flat Landfill outside of Calistoga - by Anne Wheaton)

Article highlights:

  • No-bid contracts were done for over 60 years for Clover Flat Landfill & Upper Valley Disposal with a litany of environmental violations, water pollution, fires and a company found to be in breach of contract. 
  • Active investigations by the FBI/US Justice Department, Regional Water Quality Control Board, Fish & Wildlife, EPA's Department of Toxic Substances Control, and the Local Enforcement Agency CalRecycle.
  • Racial, social justice issues with dozens of current and former Latino employees filing complaints against Upper Valley Disposal Service and Clover Flat Landfill for unsafe working conditions, discrimination, poor business practices, and environmental violations.
  • Violations lodged by every oversight agency: CalFire, Fish & Wildlife, Regional Water Quality Control Board, Napa County Planning & Building, Air Quality Control Board, CalRecycle, and OSHA.
  • A few actions you can take (more are listed at the end of the article): 

The Pestoni Family, known for their handsome donations to political officials and local non-profits, hosted countless campaign kickoffs and fundraising events for local, state, and federal level politicians at Pestoni Family Winery. Their generous appetite for filling the politicians’ coffers seems to have bought them a veil of protection from decommissioning their waste sites in spite of egregious environmental violations, willful release of leachate (garbage wastewater) into the local waterways, dozens of fires needing CalFire intervention, an employee death, employees exposed to radiation and the community and environment exposed to countless other toxins including PFAS "forever chemicals".

The Pestoni Family held contracts for hauling, recycling, and landfill for all of the upper Napa Valley waste for the cities of Yountville, St. Helena, Calistoga, and rural Northern Napa County. The company owned two waste sites in Napa County: Upper Valley Disposal Service and Clover Flat Landfill as well as holding ownership in Napa Recycling and Waste Services and owning waste operations in Lake County.  It should be noted that both the fire prone Clover Flat Landfill and the UVDS Whitehall Lane waste facility are within roughly 5 forested miles of the Napa-Sonoma county line. (Photo: UVDS Site on Whitehall Lane in St. Helena - by Anne Wheaton)

Clover Flat Landfill and Upper Valley Disposal Service still hold exclusive no-bid government contracts through a local Joint Powers Authority (JPA), the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency (UVWMA) whose sole charge is to oversee Clover Flat Landfill just outside of Calistoga and Upper Valley Disposal Service Whitehall Lane outside of St. Helena. Even though the waste site owners were found to be in breach of contract with the JPA in 2019 following a string of environmental violations and were cited for inability to manage the site, intentionally releasing leachate wastewater that contaminated the Napa River, and allowing a string of fires, the UVWMA board renewed their contracts without competitive bidding despite public outcry.

Additionally, Yountville Councilmember Margie Mohler and St. Helena Councilmember Mary Koberstein rewrote the contract with Pestoni/Clover Flat Landfill/Upper Valley Disposal Service and sweetened their deal by removing service area boundaries, thereby permitting out-of-county waste into the landfill, as well as deregulating the oversight of these facilities and absolving the JPA of oversight responsibility. 

The landfill was scheduled to close in 2021. Despite this anticipated timeline for closure, Steven Lederer, Director for the UVWMA, said the landfill life was extended to 2047 due to increased capacity because of diversion rates (waste not sent to the landfill through reuse, recycling, and composting programs). This was highly inaccurate as the landfill actually took in over 3 times its historical amount of waste in 2018 as the upvalley population and development increased local waste, and out-of-county waste and wildfire debris were adding tonnage to the landfill at exponentially higher rates. (Photo: courtesy Google Earth)

Neighbors and activists pleaded for competitive bidding and better oversight, yet they have been largely ignored by local officials. It seems that the US Justice Department and FBI may be seeing the concerns of the citizens.

In December of 2023 the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency and Director Steven Lederer were served with a subpoena from the US Justice Department's Antitrust division requesting any and every form of communication from the agency. Also in December of 2023 FBI agents raided the home of Napa County Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza, a longstanding Board Member of the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency. 

Dennis Kelly, a longtime Calistoga native resident, lived on his family's property below Clover Flat Landfill and pleaded with Napa County Supervisors, including his local Supervisor Diane Dillon, for decades asking them to please intervene in what he described as a considerable environmental and human health threat to Napa County.  Diane Dillon was one of the longest standing board members for the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency, not only was Kelly one of her district constituents his concerns fell directly under her purview as a UVWMA Board Member. Former Supervisor Dillon had close ties to the Pestoni Family and lobbied heavily for their interests at the expense of her own constituents.

One of the main tributaries coming from the Clover Flat Landfill canyon to the Napa River drained directly onto Dennis Kelly's property. He witnessed all types of garbage and sudsy water draining onto his property. In numerous letters and public comments to Napa County Board of Supervisors Dennis Kelly spoke of the damage to himself and his animals from the pollution draining out of Clover Flat Landfill. Kelly described in detail how his animals were all dying from horrific cancer on their faces and feet after drinking and playing in the water that drained from the landfill. Dennis Kelly too found himself battling cancer and while fighting for his life he appeared before the Napa County Board of Supervisors pleading with them to do something. Mr. Kelly finally caught a break when he approached St. Helena Mayor Geoff Ellsworth in 2019 and together they worked on a short documentary film series titled Garbage & Greed: Trashed in the Napa Valley. The documentary exposes the environmental and social injustices with these waste sites and the web of politicians who have been protecting them. Sadly, in July of 2022 Dennis Kelly passed away from complications related to his cancer. 

Local residents and neighbors to these troubled waste sites have become frustrated by the inaction of Napa County to do anything to protect them from fires, water contamination, health concerns, nuisance noise, obnoxious smells, and significant loss in property value. For the past five years former St. Helena Mayor Geoff Ellsworth and his partner Anne Wheaton have remained steadfast in trying to find a safe and viable waste solution to these mounting concerns. 

In 2020 Mayor Ellsworth was vocalizing his concern with these two waste sites in light of ongoing fires and fire mitigation/fuel load reduction efforts being asked of every resident and business in his community. He referenced the history of fires at these Pestoni owned waste sites and the CalFire violation letter to Clover Flat, noting that landfills inherently carry a huge volatile methane fuel load and are at increased risk for causing fires. Clover Flat Landfill sits in a rugged canyon in a CalFire "high fire tier area" bordering a "very high fire tier" zone. Landfill owner Christy Pestoni was defiant, rebuffing Ellsworth's concerns stating the waste sites are not a fire hazard and claimed they would act as a fire break. Ellsworth feared that heavy fuel load and methane gas would accelerate a wildfire. Pestoni demanded Mayor Ellsworth's resignation in a St. Helena City Council meeting, as well as sending letters from her attorney going after Mayor Ellsworth, who stood firm in his resolve to protect the community and environment from the unsafe conditions at the landfill. 

Weeks later the Napa Valley was devastated by the Glass Fire which tore through the eastern side of the Napa Valley and then crossed over to the western hills in two places, one of the areas where the fire crossed the valley was at Clover Flat Landfill. Dennis Kelly provided eyewitness accounts of the wildfire exploding when it reached Clover Flat Landfill and the fire blasting through the drainage ditch from Clover Flat Landfill along his property. Records obtained through a public records request describe the complete incineration of Clover Flat Landfill erosion control systems, as well as extensive damage to the methane capture and leachate piping systems, destroying buildings and equipment, with fire burning uncontrollably from methane well heads. In spite of the damage Christy Pestoni issued a press release which was printed in the local newspaper that falsely stated the landfill was untouched by the Glass Fire. It has taken Ellsworth almost four years to get the record corrected. Public Records requests revealed communication between Napa County public officials aware of the public health threat if the landfill caught fire, yet after the Glass Fire reached Clover Flat and burned the landfill Napa County administrators never once messaged the public or neighbors of the threat or concerns related to the burning landfill. 

Ellsworth has been dedicated to setting the record straight and has been working to get a remediation fund setup for the environment and the Latino workers of Clover Flat Landfill/ Upper Valley Disposal Service who were sent into the burning landfill to down burning trees, put out fires, and were told to cover up the destruction of the Glass Fire. Hazmat reporting protocol was ignored by the company and Napa County officials and these innocent employees who were provided with no training or protective equipment; they were sent by the company in a rented van with access permitted by Napa County officials to cross closed roads and unpermitted access areas into a burning landfill, presenting considerable health and safety implications for the air breathed and other impacts they faced.

Another aspect of concern is the composting and recycling facility of Upper Valley Disposal Service Whitehall Lane that sits on the Napa Valley floor just south of St. Helena amongst residential estates, vineyards in the Rutherford wine growing AVA, and the Bale Slough. The site has been an omen for all that live around there, disrupting their safety and quality of life with waste pond contamination, fires, awful smells, industrial noise at all hours, unsightly and dangerous piles of combustible compost, and garbage/recycling wastewater drainages running directly into the creek. It was also the site of a tragic employee death in 2013 when Gabriel Diaz Cervantez was accidentally crushed and dragged to death by a garbage truck at this site that was never designed for such industrial waste operations.

The Pestoni Family has been defiant in not being willing to explore other options in the face of constant violations, fires, neighbor complaints and impacts to their own workers. Napa Valley residents received a mixed blessing in 2023 when the Pestoni's 60 year reign of no-bid government contracts was sold (the UVWMA JPA elected to do this without the competitive bidding that should legally have occurred) to Waste Connections, a large waste conglomerate. In a written statement Christy Pestoni expressed the new company would be better equipped to handle new and mounting regulations, however significant contamination and fire problems still persist. Christy Pestoni was retained in the sale to Waste Connections and given the new title of Director of Government and Environmental Affairs.

Clover Flat Landfill has been cited by every regulatory agency who oversees their operation: CalFire, Fish & Wildlife, Regional Water Quality Control Board, Air Board, Local Enforcement Agency CalRecycle, Napa County Planning and Building, and Cal OSHA.

In spite of seeing the waste sites sold to Waste Connections and agreeing with the Pestoni's admission that a larger scale waste management company with economies of scale is better equipped to handle these waste operations, there are still the unmitigable factors of the sensitive areas where these waste sites are located. The days of dumping trash in a canyon and allowing our liquid garbage waste to drain into our rivers are a relic of our troubled environmental past, these archaic practices will haunt us into the future if we don't start mitigating them now. 

There are significant portions of Clover Flat Landfill that are unlined, and employees have reported "ghost" piping (diverting leachate into the waterways through unmapped piping) on both waste sites. There have also been reports from Dennis Kelly and others who prefer to be unnamed of Mare Island Naval shipyard waste, asbestos, and other toxic materials being trucked up to Clover Flat Landfill in the middle of the night and being buried during the time when the Mare Island shipyard was shutting down.

In 2020 Cal EPA required all landfills to test for PFAS, better known as the cancer-causing agents, dubbed "forever chemicals".  Clover Flat Landfill's sampling tested positive for PFAS in ALL the groundwater, leachate, and leachate condensate sampling.  PFAS testing on the neighbor's property below Clover Flat Landfill also revealed PFAS in high concentrations indicating that PFAS "forever chemicals" are escaping the landfill and entering our waterways that flow into the Napa River.

Fish and Wildlife issued an extensive and concerning Damage Assessment Report in May of 2020 documenting flagrant environmental violations including severe stream pollution and a complete loss of aquatic life in the Napa River from illegal and illicit discharges from Clover Flat Landfill.

In December of 2022 the Regional Water Quality Control Board fined Clover Flat Landfill $619,400 for environmental violations. 

The California Sports Fishing Alliance brought forth a federal stormwater lawsuit in September of 2022 against Clover Flat Landfill that was settled for an undisclosed amount. 

There have been numerous employee and neighbor lawsuits for both facilities.  In 2023 dozens of current and former employees of Upper Valley Disposal Service and Clover Flat Landfill filed complaints related to racial and social justice issues as well as environmental violations with over 12 State and Federal regulatory agencies.   

Currently there are open investigations by both Federal and State regulatory agencies on both the criminal and civil sides of justice. The open investigations include The US Justice Department/FBI, EPA's Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, Fish & Wildlife, and the Local Enforcement Agency of CalRecycle.

The Waste Connections company is uniquely positioned to change course and write a better future for the Napa Valley's garbage and pollution problems. Waste Connections owns the Potrero Hills Landfill in Solano County where all of the southern part of Napa Valley transfers their waste. Waste Connections has submitted a permit request to employ transfer stations at both Upper Valley Disposal Service and Clover Flat Landfill which is a positive step. 

Advocates are asking that Napa County approve the permits for the transfer stations with the caveats that they forfeit their permit to landfill more waste at Clover Flat Landfill and correct the wastewater and fire control problems.  If Waste Connections elects to cap Clover Flat landfill the benefits are enormous, and the remediation efforts can begin. The process to close down and monitor the landfill is a 30-year process. 

The site can become a Superfund site if needed and the fire risks and methane production will diminish over time. The path to better environmental management and human health and safety protections is within reach, remediation and decommissioning can be achieved since Waste Connections owns a viable nearby waste site with proper management and economies of scale at Potrero Hills. 

We ask that the Sierra Club and its members to join us in our effort to decommission Clover Flat Landfill. You can reach me, Anne Wheaton, at environmentallysustainablesol@gmail.com

Here are some action items that one can do: 

Here are two websites that have more information:

Thank you!

Related blogs:

Related content:

Land Use/Growth Issues