San Diego (KGTV)---Suzanne lives just a few miles from the Sycamore landfill in Santee. A few weeks ago she received a letter from the San Diego Air Pollution Control District.
"It scared me but what are you gonna do?" Suzanne said.
It says in part, that based on data from 2013, a health risk assessment shows that some toxic air contaminants, primarily arsenic and diesel particulate matter, may be increasing the cancer risks for people to 38 chances in a million.
The law requires the public to be notified when the risk goes past 10 chances in a million.
"I was very disheartened cause we've never heard of this before when we bought the house, we've been here 28 years," Suzanne said.
The air district says Sycamore is part of its so called "Hot Spot Program", which monitors and studies facilities with potential elevated health risk. The facility is owned by Republic Services.
According to a statement issued to ABC 10News, the company is working with the air district to re-evaluate the findings.
"This re-evaluation may show that data from 2013 indicate that the naturally occurring material had minimal offsite impacts."
In the meantime, the air district says people can contact them with questions or concerns about the landfill and air quality. But people like Suzanne are left wondering just how big of an impact this could make.
"Thinking that property values will go down. Might be hard to sell the house because you have to disclose stuff like this when you sell your house."
