Clean-up
The Calabasas Landfill is owned by Los Angeles County and operated by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts. The Calabasas Landfill is one of 17 dump sites throughout Los Angeles County that are working in conjunction with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove hazardous materials from the affected areas.
According to the City of Calabasas, there are two phases cleaning up the areas impacted by the fires. In Phase One, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removes the waste and rubble.
“This work includes conducting Phase One of the fire debris cleanup, which removes hazardous materials such as paint, cleaners and solvents, oils, pesticides, batteries and asbestos from the burned areas,” the City of Calabasas wrote on their website.
In Phase Two, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleans up all the remaining debris not removed in Phase one.
“Phase Two focuses on removing fire and ash debris, chimneys, trees, foundations, soil and any household hazardous waste not removed during Phase One,” the city wrote. “As Phase Two progresses, Phase One removal protocols continue to apply, meaning hazardous materials are separated and handled separately from Phase Two debris.”
The city goes on to explain that the waste is processed carefully before being transported to the landfills.
“The Phase two material is wrapped and sealed at the burn site before being transported to lined landfills authorized to accept fire debris,” the statement reads. “Please note that the Calabasas Landfill does not accept household hazardous waste, and this requirement will remain in place.”
Despite the claims from the city that hazardous waste is processed carefully, residents of Calabasas have argued against disposing fire waste in the Calabasas Landfill. They are concerned that the proximity of the landfill to a nearby elementary school, Lupin Hill Elementary School, endangers the health of children and residents.
“The health and well-being of our residents should not be jeopardized in the name of expedience,” Randi Feilich, the vice chair of the Calabasas Environmental Commission on CBS said. “It is necessary that the county take every measure necessary to ensure full remediation of any harmful toxins.”
Since 2007, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has dropped the practice of testing the soil for lingering contamination of 17 toxic metals. So the Times tested the soil out for themself and spanned their testing from Altadena to the Pacific Palisades. Calabasas’ and Pacific Palisades’ border are 2.3 miles apart.
The Los Angeles Times discovered on multiple properties cleaned by the Army Corps of Engineers, lead levels three times higher than the state’s health standard.
“By not conducting soil testing, the federal government and state government have made the decision that leaving contaminated properties—and not informing the homeowners about how much contamination remains—is okay,” professor of civil, environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University, Andrew Whelton said to The Los Angeles Times.
Soil testing can be done, but the state and federal government will not subsidize it. This leaves the County’s residents to either test for themself or hope for the best.
Long Term Health Effects
On Feb. 25, the Los Angeles County Board of Education approved a request by the L.A. County Department of Public Works to expand the waste site to accept more disposal from the fire. Again, Calabasas residents raised alarm at the proposal.
“In their rush to clean up one disaster, the Board of Supervisors just created another—one that will impact countless communities near the landfill, not just Calabasas, for generations to come,” City Councilmember Alicia Weintraub said in a statement to the Acorn.
Others are concerned with the long-term effects on residents.
“What I’m concerned about as a pediatrician is that in years to come, we are going to see more cases of cancer and tumors and autoimmune issues and illnesses and diseases, just from the environmental exposure of these contaminants,” Calabasas-based Dr. Tanya Altmann, who’s with the American Academy of Pediatrics said to Marketplace.
The long term effects after exposure to toxic debris include lung damage and failure, kidney failure and liver damage.
The main issue regarding dumping toxic waste is the delayed impact on human health for decades to come. While it is an extreme example to use as a reference, we cannot deny the possibility of something like “The Love Canal” incident occurring.
“The Love Canal” was a major environmental tragedy in the 1970s. It took place in Niagara Falls, New York, in a community that was built in the 1950s on a major landfill site that Hooker Chemical Company used as their dumping grounds.
On Aug. 1 1978, a New York Times headline wrote the following:
“Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.”
It wasn’t until 20 years later that the health risks became apparent.
“Public awareness of the disaster unfolded in the late 1970s when investigative newspaper coverage and grassroots door-to-door health surveys began to reveal a series of inexplicable illnesses—epilepsy, asthma, migraines, and nephrosis—and abnormally high rates of birth defects and miscarriages in the Love Canal neighborhood,” Dr. Jordan Kleiman of Geneseo Honors College said.
Fast forward 45 years to Calabasas, CA, Granada Hills resident Kasia Sparks echoed this sentiment when she spoke during a protest in Granada Hills in February.
“We’re talking decades in the making,” Sparks said. “But we don’t want to get sick and then have somebody 20 years later say, ‘Oh, we probably shouldn’t have done that.’ We want to stop the problem now. We don’t want fire debris in this landfill.”
This is a valid concern among residents as one of the landfills selected for the fire debris is just 100 yards away from a local children’s park only two miles away from the landfills.
Lawsuit
On Feb. 19, the City of Calabasas sued LA County and its Sanitation District No. 2’s owner and operator of the facility for the ash disposal in their city. The lawsuit is still ongoing. In addition to the lawsuit, the community of Calabasas protested near the landfill’s entrance on March 7 where Public figure Kourtney Kardashian was present as an advocate.
“Toxic chemicals and ash do not belong in a community where there’s kids and families, and people work here,” Kardashian said to the Acorn. “Calabasas is a place that cares about our citizens and their health and happiness, and it’s just not the place.”
L.A. County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene of the protest barring dump trucks from entering the landfill to disperse traffic.
“I just want the residents to know to keep up the activism,” Mayor Pro Tem James Bozajian said to the Acorn. “The struggle is not over.”
Conclusion
Once the shock of fire’s destruction subsides, the city must figure out how to deal with the fallout of one of the most destructive fires in California history. Local government and medical experts continue to raise concerns about the consequences of using this landfill in such a manner.
It is also undeniable that the debris does need somewhere to go. Herein lies the problem– one that does not have a solution that is both ethical and practical. There are two groups who both want the debris to be cleared out, but neither knows exactly what to do with it.
The fire’s short term impact is clearly visible as of now. Yet, the long term impact is the main fuel of the protestor’s arguments. The fire caused irrevocable damage to the structures of the Calabasas community, physically and psychologically. While disputes between what happens next are still up in the air, one thing for certain is that the community of Calabasas will not stop to fight for what they think is right.
