Power, influence, and health: why lived experience must be central in landfill policy
How would you feel if your kids couldn’t go outside to play, if your neighbors had disproportionately high rates of asthma and cancer, and if you couldn’t trust the air or water in your own community? For more than 115 million Americans living within five miles of a municipal solid waste landfill, this is the reality.
Landfills are often treated like passive storage sites. Trash goes in, gets buried, and disappears from public view. But waste does not simply vanish. As waste and organic material breaks down, landfills continuously release methane and other harmful pollutants into surrounding neighborhoods, schools, parks, and water systems.
The health impacts are serious. Living near a landfill means increased exposure to pollutants like benzene, toluene, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are linked to serious conditions like asthma, heart disease, and cancer. Research has also found evidence linking proximity to landfills with adverse birth outcomes, increased cancer risks, and negative mental health impacts.
For children, older adults, and people with preexisting health conditions, these exposures can be especially dangerous. One community advocate Full Circle Future partners with describes keeping her children indoors because the odors outside become overwhelming. “My family has experienced a list of health symptoms: headaches, burning eyes, nausea, skin rashes and hives, severe nose bleeds, fatigue, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, heart issues, and miscarriages. About a dozen of my direct neighbors have had cancer in the last 2 years.”
Landfills aren’t just a pollution problem. They represent power, influence, and who has a seat at the table where decisions are made. Black, brown, Indigenous, and lower-income communities are significantly more likely to live near waste facilities and suffer the health consequences that come with them. This is not accidental.
Landfills and other polluting infrastructure are disproportionately located near communities with fewer economic and political resources to fight back. The result is a cycle where the same neighborhoods already dealing with health disparities are forced to absorb even more environmental and health-related harm.
For many families, the consequences extend far beyond physical health. Millions of Americans are underinsured or living paycheck to paycheck. A single emergency room visit, specialist appointment, or ongoing treatment plan can become financially devastating. Families living near landfills are often left dealing with impossible choices between protecting their health, paying their bills, or trying to move away from communities where homes can become difficult to sell.
Impacted communities have been raising the alarm about landfills for decades and have too often been ignored. But here is a better way forward. When impacted communities are centered and their voices are taken seriously, real change follows. Two recent examples make this clear.
North Carolina’s Enduring Environmental Justice Fights
North Carolina is widely recognized as the birthplace of the modern environmental justice movement. In 1982, residents of Warren County — a predominantly Black and low-income rural community — organized mass protests against a hazardous waste landfill sited in their county. More than 500 people were arrested during weeks of demonstrations, one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in the South since the Civil Rights Movement. Those protests sparked decades of research, advocacy, and policy development focused on the unequal environmental burdens faced by marginalized communities.
That legacy continues. For years, residents living near the Sampson County Regional Landfill, the largest in North Carolina, raised alarms about odors, air pollution, groundwater contamination, and the presence of PFAS, so-called "forever chemicals" that persist in the environment and the human body for long periods. Countless neighbors fell sick with respiratory conditions, organ damage, and cancer, with little accountability from those in power.
That changed when community members said enough is enough. In 2024, EJCAN and the Southern Environmental Law Center threatened to sue the landfill's owner and operator, GFL, for its blatant disregard for community health and safety. The resulting settlement required the landfill to implement additional pollution-control measures, expand environmental monitoring, provide alternative drinking water to affected households, and establish a community-led fund to advance environmental justice and public health initiatives in Sampson County. It's not perfect, but it's progress — and it was made possible through the power of community organizing.
California: Community Testimony Drives the Strongest Standard in the Country
All the way across the country, residents living near southern California's Chiquita Canyon Landfill took their stories directly to policymakers. For years, they had been sounding alarm bells about what was happening in their community. Families reported nosebleeds that lasted for days, children being pulled from schools, entire neighborhoods dealing with new cancer diagnoses. One family described driving to a Walmart parking lot in the middle of the night just to escape the toxic air long enough to sleep.
Those residents packed public meetings, filed complaints, gave testimony, and organized alongside health and environmental advocates. In November 2024, the California Air Resources Board responded with a unanimous vote approving major updates to the state's Landfill Methane Regulation — and the strongest landfill emissions standard in the country. The updated rules require modern methane leak detection, limit the ability of operators to take gas collection systems offline, strengthen fire prevention requirements, and make key data publicly accessible. According to CARB's own analysis, the new rules will cut methane emissions equivalent to taking more than 111,000 vehicles off the road annually.
The rule exists because communities living near landfills refused to accept pollution as normal. It is proof that regulators can act when residents demand it.
Centering Community Is Not Optional
What North Carolina and California show us is that when those voices are heard and amplified, real, measurable progress is possible. We need those in power to pull up chairs for the people who have been unwelcome at the table for far too long, and to listen.
We can build a waste system that actually serves communities, but we can’t do it by rebuilding the same systems of power that got us here, or without centering, listening to, or investing in those most bearing the brunt of the harm. The communities most impacted should be at the forefront of solutions, not shut out of decision-making processes. We’re pulling up chairs for ourselves at tables where we’ve been unwelcome for too long. Now, we need those in power to listen.
