The week after the Eaton and Palisades fires tore across Los Angeles, clear blue skies shone over the city. Residents consulted their weather apps; the Air Quality Index (AQI) was surprisingly favorable. It seemed impossible that, just days prior, two of the most destructive wildfires in California history had unleashed toxic smoke and made thick ash rain for miles.
But looks — and AQIs — can be deceiving. Urban wildfires are known to unleash a range of carcinogens not captured in typical air quality metrics. When things like plastic pipes, synthetic building materials, cars and appliances burn, they can contaminate the surrounding environment with benzene, formaldehyde, asbestos, and more.
Then, of course, comes the question of what to do with those burnt materials. The immediate destruction wrought by the Los Angeles fires was just the tip of the iceberg. Now, the city must contend with millions of tons of toxic ash and debris. As the federal government speeds through its cleanup process, many of the communities set to receive hazardous waste are pushing back. The battle underscores a growing problem in the face of the climate crisis: The debris must go somewhere, but where it ends up — and who gets a say — is often determined by longstanding social inequities.
In January, President Donald Trump directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to complete its first phase of debris removal within 30 days — a warp speed directive for one of the most complex wildfire cleanup efforts in U.S. history. On February 26, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency had completed phase one — removed the most highly toxic materials, such as lithium batteries and propane tanks — and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) would take over for the phase two cleanup of ash, rubble and contaminated soil.
But the federal government’s approach has received substantial criticism from the start. When the EPA announced that the hazardous waste from the Eaton Fire would be temporarily stored in Lario Park, the mayor of the neighboring city of Duarte, Cesar Garcia, told LA Public Press that local officials hadn’t been consulted about that plan. In fact, Garcia said he found out in the same way as everyone else: through a news article.
The communities near Lario Park are predominantly working class, Latinx and Black, and local leaders worry their communities will suffer lasting harm from toxic emissions. The EPA says it will conduct air monitoring and water and soil sampling near the facility, but the agency has not announced long-term plans for the waste. Duarte officials have requested access to the EPA’s testing data to perform independent audits.
“We are a poor Latino community,” Mayor Robert Gonzales of Azusa, another city near Lario Park, told the New York Times. “Are we looked at with a different set of glasses, compared to Palisades or Pasadena?”
In fact, hazardous waste facilities have disproportionately burdened Black and Latinx communities for decades. The pattern was identified as far back as 1987, when the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice published the report, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States,” which found that communities with higher percentages of Black and Latinx residents were more likely to be chosen as sites for toxic waste. Today, nearly 80 percent of waste incinerators are located in communities of color or low-income communities. And as a warming planet fuels increasingly intense disasters, the disposal of the leftover debris stands to exacerbate this discrepancy.
While USACE has designated phase two of its cleanup as nontoxic, this, too, has raised concerns, since the removed soil will not be tested for contaminants.
Soil testing has been conducted after every major wildfire in California since 2007, but despite the scale of this disaster and an appeal from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-California) himself, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not be providing funding for soil testing this time around. A FEMA spokesperson told The Hill that, in consultation with the EPA, the agency had determined soil sampling would be “tedious, inefficient, and a barrier to timely clean up and recovery.”
The phase two waste will be temporarily stored at three Los Angeles area landfills, though again, long-term plans have yet to be announced. The City of Calabasas, where Sunshine Canyon Landfill is located, filed lawsuits to prevent the disposal of wildfire debris in its facility, which is not permitted to receive hazardous waste. While the EPA claims the phase two waste is safe, in past years, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has tested wildfire ash from burned homes and found that it contained enough heavy metals and lead to be classified as hazardous waste under state guidelines.
Residents near Sunshine Canyon Landfill are particularly concerned about the influx of debris because the facility already has a track record of noncompliance: Last year, it was cited for at least 25 air pollution and nuisance odor violations.
“Sunshine Canyon Landfill has shown itself incapable of processing the household waste that already goes to their facility,” Erick Fefferman, a community member, told the Los Angeles Times. “Adding toxic debris from a wildfire with known heavy metals and contaminants defies all common sense. Let’s not compound one disaster and create another one.”
In an ideal world, all potentially toxic waste would be deposited at carefully selected facilities, adequately outfitted with resources to prevent harm to human health and the environment. Government data from soil, air and water testing would be proactive, robust and transparent. Local officials and community members closest to the sites would be notified and consulted — though the facilities would also be far away from residential areas.
This is a far cry from the reality unfolding now in the Los Angeles area. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Government officials must devise a better, comprehensive plan for how to handle hazardous waste after natural disasters. After all, we know there are many more to come.
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for phase two of the L.A. wildfire cleanup.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today during our fundraiser. We have until midnight tonight to add 140 new monthly donors. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.