The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 on Tuesday to allow Calabasas landfill to accept potentially toxic wildfire debris outside its typical service area and add tonnage restrictions for two other landfills in Southern California to Contains fire-related waste.
Calabasas Landfill is a county-owned landfill owned by Agoura’s non-incorporate community A area of approximately 350 square mileswhich includes approximately 70% of the fire-damaged areas affected by the Palisades fire. The board of directors unanimously voted to abandon the six-month limit, allowing the Calabasas landfill to receive ash and debris from the entire Palisades Fire burn scar and potentially obtain it from Eaton Fire and others.
County supervisors also approved the increase in daily wildfire debris that can be disposed of in Sunshine Canyon and Lancaster landfills. Sylmar’s Sunshine Canyon Landfill can also receive 2,900 tons of solid waste per day, while Lancaster landfill can receive another 4,000 tons per day – but only if the additional waste is composed only of wildfire debris.
County officials insist that the changes are necessary to quickly remove potentially toxic debris from properties destroyed in Eaton and Palisade fires, highlighting the public of the Pacific Palisades and Altadna Sanitation and the environment pose direct threats.
“There are people who want nothing,” said Lindsey Horvath, the director, whose areas include Calabasas and Sunshine Canyon Landfill. “They don’t want any of these landfills. I can understand this frustration because they are worried about what this material is.
“And I also learned that we have to move these debris to a place … to keep it safe in the community. We have to make sure that the best practices we have are not just verbal services,” she said.
The vote comes ahead of the vote, the little guy from Southern California residents submitted written comments and opposes the wildfire debris disposal strategy, urging county supervisors to deny exemptions from sending more contaminated materials to local landfills. Residents living near local landfills say wildfire debris should be sent to dangerous waste landfills. They fear that poisonous ash will drift into nearby communities in strong winds or dip into groundwater tables.
“We are scared,” one Agoura Hills resident said during public comments. “Our property is threatened, our family is threatened, our health is threatened – we are in your mercy. Therefore, I Just begging everyone to do the right thing. We know what the bet is, you can’t litter the bells. This will cause irreparable harm to our community.”
Voting followed Fierce protests in communities near landfillsincluding a couple of residents standing in traffic and blocking trucks entering the Calabasas landfill.
Recently, dozens of protesters gathered at a busy intersection in the Granada Hills near the Sunshine Canyon landfill near the Los Angeles Mountains. Protesters, including Kasia Sparks, a resident of Granada Hills, waved hand-made signs against the debris handling plan and shouted unanimously: “No toxic dump!”
“The problem is that these types of health-related issues are not instant,” Sparks said in support nearby. “We’re talking about decades. But we don’t want to get sick and then 20 years later someone said, “Oh, we probably shouldn’t do that.” “We want to stop the problem immediately. We don’t want fire debris in this landfill. We don’t want it. It doesn’t belong to it. So we shouldn’t put it in it.”
Public health officials say wildfire ash may contain numerous toxic substances in burned buildings, including lead that has damaged brains and arsenic that causes cancer. In the past, tests found that wildfire ash contained enough chemicals Considered hazardous waste According to the California Department of Toxic Substance Control, according to California disposal standards.
Typically, waste with high-risk chemicals is usually brought to hazardous waste facilities. However, emergency exemptions and disaster exemptions can allow potentially contaminated debris (including wildfire ash) to be considered non-hazardous waste and see them as landfills that usually only deal with garbage and construction debris.
After the Eaton and Palisades wildfires, federal cleanup workers began to drag the waste to local landfills that were not intended to be Accept high levels of toxic chemicals.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees debris removal and disposal, said its contractors are using water to prevent any dust as they remove it and remove it from burned properties and drag the wreckage away. County officials also tried to resolve the issue, saying that if safety protocols are followed, the risk of exposure would be small.
“The country has confirmed [these landfills] Fire debris can be processed,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “People have much less chance of getting in with ingesting, inhaling or touching it. We do rely on everyone, landfill managers continue to take precautions required by law so that … they minimize contact. ”
The Supervisory Board also held a closed-door meeting to discuss the lawsuit to bring fire debris to Calabasas.
The Calabasas City Council unanimously voted to direct its city prosecutors to seek temporary restraining orders in the Los Angeles County Superior Court to prevent Los Angeles County from accepting wildfire debris from Calabasas landfill. City filing Within a mile of the landfill border, 2,500 homes and three schools were cited.
“Counties and health districts have a legal obligation to ensure that only non-hazardous waste is disposed of in landfills,” Mayor Peter Kraut wrote in a letter to residents last Friday. “This is for preventing Irresible harm to nearby residences, schools and communities is essential.”
Couple, Calabasas residents raise funds to hire private lawyers Refer to similar suits The Los Angeles County Superior Court objected to the county. In this case, the lawyer stressed that it is impossible to ensure the safety of nearby residents without testing.
