LOS ANGELES — When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began Phase 1 removal of household hazardous materials from properties destroyed or heavily damaged by the Eaton and Palisades fires, officials anticipated it to last for several months.
Instead, this week, local officials and the governor were touting the fact that it took just 30 days to reach 100% completion, announcing that Phase 1 had been completed on Feb. 25.
That means that in record time EPA crews cleaned up an array of various kinds of household hazardous material from the 9,000 properties it ultimately cleared.
Officials noted, however, that EPA crews were unable to clear hazardous materials from several thousand properties that were deemed too dangerous to clear. Those properties were “deferred” to Phase 2 of the debris-removal program, meaning the Corps of Engineers will handle the removal of all hazardous and other wastes from those areas.
“This is the largest wildfire response that EPA has ever engaged in,” said EPA Acting Regional Administrator Cheree Peterson on Wednesday.
With Phase 1 done, the future of the five staging sites used for household hazardous materials has been on the minds of local residents.
What’s next?
Many of the sites will be closing as EPA crews demobilize, but a few will remain open for varying purposes.
In the Palisades fire footprint, the Topanga staging area will stay open, to accept and process lithium ion batteries in support of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ work on Phase 2 debris removal, according to Tara Fitzgerald, EPA incident commander.
The Topanga site has stopped accepting household hazardous materials for now, but the EPA will return and it will be the only site that will be used for battery processing in support of the Corps work in the future, Fitzgerald said.
The staging site at Will Rogers State Beach parking lot will close, as battery processing begins to wrap up at the site, which is currently still accepting household hazardous materials (HHM) from the Army Corps of Engineers. The site will close within the next couple of weeks and will not be utilized by the Corps.
“We understand that there’s some potential expedition there that we’re trying to work for because of the wanting the beach to be able to open,” Fitzgerald said.
In the Eaton fire footprint, the Lario staging area will be close and will not be utilized by the Corps.
“We’re still processing out some of our batteries and HHM that was collected there and preparing to do some restoration of removing some of the gravel that we put down and things like that,” Fitzgerald said.
Once EPA operations have stopped at Lario, the closing and restoration process may take up to 90 days, but the agency is working to have it done as quickly as possible, according to Fitzgerald. The EPA will also then conduct soil sampling and write a report of the results.
The Altadena Golf Course site will now be utilized by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for their processes and the EPA will continue to process batteries at the site until the agency can ends its support for the Corps’ Phase 2 work.
The Farnsworth Park site in Altadena, which was not used for staging debris but instead for vehicle storage and parking, will be demobilized. Fitzgerald said the EPA is working with county parks to turn the site back over.
Now that Phase 1 is done and many of the sites are closing, personnel numbers will also be going down.
Roughly 100 EPA employees will remain in Southern California for support, down substantially from the more than 1,700 that were once working on wildfire cleanup in the region.
Fitzgerald said the workers that remain will be those processing batteries, on-site coordinators, safety officers, public information officers and community involvement coordinators to answer questions.
“I know there’s been a lot of questions about the staging areas. We’re going to be as transparent as possible about how we break down our operations and show that we are going to keep our promise to the public that we’re leaving these sites as good or better than we found them,” Fitzgerald said.
Speed of Phase 1
What did it take to get Phase 1 done so fast? Turns out, the EPA threw a ton of resources at this catastrophe. But the speed also came at the cost of raising the ire of local communities for not getting a heads-up that the debris was coming to collection sites near their towns.
First off, local and state officials pushed hard for the fast-tracked clean-up, aligned with a larger approach to cutting red tape to get people rebuilding their properties.
The EPA had a lot of agencies supporting the fast-tracked effort.
FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the State of California, State Parks, California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the city and county of Los Angeles, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) all supported the removal.
And it didn’t hurt that the agency threw huge resources at the effort, part of the largest wildfire hazardous materials cleanup in the history of the EPA.
More than 1,700 staffers identified and then cleared hazardous materials from properties in both fire footprints, officials said. EPA crews also worked to remove and dispose of more than 1,000 lithium-ion batteries from vehicles, homes and other battery powered products.
Nearly 700 EV batteries were collected, and almost 300 solar storage power battery packs.
“We ramped up,” said EPA Acting Regional Administrator Cheree Peterson. “We normally have 15 to 20 teams addressing wildfires. We had up to 90 teams. We borrowed resources from around the country, and EPA. We had resources from the Department of Defense, the Coast Guard and also from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. That is how we ramped up our team so quickly and meeting our goal.”
It also raised the ire of some community leaders, who were disappointed that local cities near the collection sites for the debris were not given a heads-up that the debris was coming.
Ultimately, officials estimate that 4.5 millions tons of fire, ash and debris will ultimately be removed from both the Eaton and Palisades fire-impacted areas combined.
Pushback
Back in January, when asked by L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis at the supervisor’s board meeting why local cities were not contacted or made aware of the pending action, EPA on-scene coordinator Celeste McCoy said she received an executive order by President Donald Trump within the past 48 hours to hurry things up.
“Under the new administration, we have received an executive order to expedite this process,” McCoy said at the time, in response to a question from Solis on why local cities were not told until the site was ready. The EPA began taking hazardous materials from burned homes and businesses to the site on Jan. 28, the agency reported.
Solis, who had asked McCoy several questions, said Azusa, Duarte, Irwindale and Baldwin Park should have been made aware that the Lario Park site will be used to accept hazardous waste, such as paint, oils, pesticides, propane tanks and lithium ion batteries from electric and plug-in cars and battery walls on houses.
At the time, Azusa Mayor Robert Gonzales said the county must have known about the EPA and Army Corps making a deal to use the site. Solis did not indicate the county knew anything until it was reported in the news media.
“There were deals cut and we happened to be caught in the crosshairs,” Gonzales said.
McCoy said the Lario Park site was chosen because it was owned by a federal agency, making the transaction easier to complete. It has enough, flat acreage to spread tarps and receive hazardous waste from the fire zone.
Topanga residents protested the site at the former Topanga Motel, asking EPA officials if it was safe to sort hazardous materials so close to a creek and the ocean. They questioned why Will Rogers State Beach, closer to the more devastated areas, was not used instead.
When Will Rogers State Beach’s parking lot was established as a second site for Palisades fire debris, residents protested the site’s proximity to the beach.
The Lario Staging site near Irwindale, a site for Eaton fire debris, upset residents who felt it was too far from the fire’s footprint, bringing hazardous debris into their unaffected neighborhoods.
The EPA has maintained that there is no risk to nearby residents, soil or water. The agency uses layers of plastic and storage drums for the materials, which never touch the ground.
Nevertheless, despite the chorus of opposition to the collection sites in Malibu, Topanga and in the San Gabriel Valley, the debris kept getting collected and hauled on stake-bed trucks at a furious pace to the collection sites, to safely sort and package hazardous materials.
Lessons learned
Fitzgerald, the EPA incident commander, noted that feedback from the public regarding staging sites is something the agency will be taking with them going forward, having learned from the outreach they did in response to public concern.
“If we do have another natural disaster response, I think it’s been a big lesson learned that we need to be ahead of the game on the staging areas, whereas in the past we’ve done this work similarly, similar areas and not had so much public concern,” Fitzgerald said.
“We’ve got quite a bit of lessons learned on that and outreach materials, and we’re just going to have to have that in our minds in the event that we set up again and do this. So that was a big one for us.”