Despite residents’ concerns, three Los Angeles County landfills — Calabasas, Sunshine Canyon and Lancaster — were authorized on Tuesday, Feb. 25, to accept tons of debris from the Palisades and Eaton fires.
By a unanimous 5-0 vote of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, these three municipal waste landfills received the green light to begin receiving truckloads of extra waste from thousands of burned-out homes and businesses in Pasadena, Altadena, the Pacific Palisades and parts of Malibu.
The approval included a waiver, allowing Calabasas Landfill to accept fire debris waste for six months. Lancaster and Sunshine Canyon were authorized for four months. The time frame can be extended by the board.
“We have to take this material to a place that is legally appropriate,” said Third District Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. She added that the county, state and federal government must ensure best practices are followed when moving this debris to a controlled place.
Dozens of people who live near these landfills said they were concerned about debris from the Palisades and Eaton fires leaking from the landfills into the groundwater, or becoming airborne where it can be inhaled by nearby residents and school children.
“We have serious concerns that disposal of fire debris in landfills near residents is not safe. We should not move in such haste that we create a second disaster,” said Ed Albrecht, a councilmember from the city of Calabasas.
The debris that is proposed to be stored at Sunshine Canyon, Calabasas and Lancaster landfills is not designated as hazardous waste.
“Materials taken to the Calabasas, Sunshine Canyon, and Lancaster landfills will not include household hazardous waste,” wrote Mark Pestrella, director of the county Public Works Department, in a letter to the board.
The debris is scheduled to be removed from the burned properties only after the Environmental Protection Agency has completed removing hazardous materials such as lithium-ion batteries, paints, pesticides and asbestos materials that contain compounds that can be health hazards.
As Horvath pointed out, household hazardous materials are being taken to staging areas for processing and packing and this waste is not going into those municipal landfills. Staging sites include: Will Rogers State Beach, the former Topanga Motel, Lario Staging Area in Azusa, Farnsworth Park, and the Altadena Golf Course. Then, it is being trucked to hazardous waste landfills in “Phase 1” of the cleanup.
Major debris removal and disposal into the three Class III municipal solid waste landfills is the secondary process spearheaded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, called “Phase 2.” These landfills are not authorized to accept hazardous waste and inspectors will not allow hazardous waste to be deposited there, officials said.
Many from the public who argued against using these in-county landfills did not agree that fire debris is nontoxic. Some wanted it trucked out of L.A. County.
“It is impossible to sort toxic ash from nontoxic ash,” said Frances Alet, a resident of Calabasas.
Two lawsuits have been filed against using the Calabasas Landfill, one by the city of Calabasas and one by a group called Protect Calabasas. “We don’t want to create a new major health crisis. Let’s be safe and take it to a hazardous waste facility,” said Noah Perch-Ahern, attorney with Greenberg Glusker representing the resident group.
Officials from both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said that before the debris is moved testing is done for asbestos, which can cause lung disease.
If that is found, that material is classified as hazardous waste and taken to a hazardous waste landfill, not a municipal landfill. The nearest hazardous waste landfill is the Kettleman Hills Hazardous Waste Facility in Kings County.
Col. Eric Swenson, with the Army Corps, explained that the fire ash debris is wet down, wrapped in plastic and taken to a municipal landfill.
“It is a time-tested process we have been doing in the federal government and the state of California for well over a decade,” he said.
The L.A. County Department of Public Health explained that burned-out areas left uncontrolled and open to rain and wind can be hazardous. It is important to move that material out of the neighborhoods and buried by dirt layers in a landfill.
“When it is packaged, it is sent in a truck and disposed in a landfill that must have a liner; which the state has already determined it can handle fire debris, and there is much less chance of people coming in contact with it, inhaling it or touching it,” said Barbara Ferrer, director of the L.A. County Public Health.
Sunshine Canyon near Granada Hills began accepting fire debris on Monday, said Gabe Thompson, the landfill’s local agency enforcement agency’s program manager. “The material is double wrapped, then wet down again, before being pushed into the working area of the landfill and wet down again,” he said.
The fire debris was authorized to go into these landfills by the Army Corps. The supervisor’s motion sets the increased amounts for Lancaster and Sunshine Canyon. Calabasas gets the go-ahead to take waste from outside its normal service area.
For the Lancaster Landfill, the board motion allows an increase in the daily solid waste intake tonnage authorized under its Conditional Use Permit by 3,000 tons, from 6,100 tons to 9,100 tons per day.
And for Sunshine Canyon Landfill, the daily tonnage limit will increase by 20% or by about 2,900 tons, from 12,100 tons to 15,000 tons per day.
In recent years, the Sunshine Canyon Landfill has been the subject of thousands of odor complaints to the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). In January, SQAMD received 118 complaints. Since 2016, the landfill has been ordered to reduce odors, and the operators took many steps to comply, but complaints from the public have continued.
Figures for Calabasas were unavailable.
Robert Ferrante, general manager of the Sanitation Districts which operates Calabasas, said that landfill took in 260,000 tons of fire debris in an 18-month period from the Woolsey fire of 2019. That fire burned 100,000 acres.
All three landfills have linings that prevent leakage of liquids into the ground, said Ferrante. Monitoring of the Woolsey fire material showed no evidence of contamination moving off the site, he said.
SCNG staff writer Sierra van der Brug contributed to this article.