The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 votes on Tuesday to accept potentially toxic wildfire debris outside typical service areas and address fire-related waste. Two other Southern California landfills allowed to increase tonnage.
Calabasas landfills, a county-owned landfill in Agra unincorporated communities, will only receive waste from around 350 square miles of area, including about 70% of the fire-damaged areas affected by the Pallisard fire. It is permitted. The board unanimously voted to abandon that limit for six months, allowing Calabasas landfills to receive ashes and debris from the entire burn scars of Palisade.
County supervisors also approved a daily increase in wildfire debris that can be disposed of at Sunshine Canyon and Lancaster landfills. The Sunshine Canyon landfill in Sylmer can accommodate 2,900 tons of solid waste per day, while the Lancaster landfill can add 4,000 tons of its daily.
County officials argue that changes are needed to quickly remove potentially toxic debris from property destroyed in the Eton and Palisade fires, and contaminants are public health and environment in Palisade and Altadena in the Pacific Ocean. It emphasized that it poses an immediate threat to the
“Some people, they don’t want anything,” said Superintendent Lindsey Horvas, the district that includes the Calabasas and Sunshine Canyon landfills. “They don’t want to go to any of these landfills, and they worry about what this material is, so I can understand that frustration.
“And we also understand that we have to move this shard to that location… so that it’s safe in the community. And the best practice we have is lip service. You need to make sure it’s not,” she said.
Prior to the vote, a large number of Southern California residents submitted written comments, opposed wildfire debris treatment strategies, and exempt county supervisors from sending more contaminated material to local landfills. I urged him to deny it. Residents who live near local landfills say wildfire debris should instead be sent to dangerous waste landfills. They fear that toxic ashes will float in nearby communities or leach into groundwater tables during strong winds.
“We’re scared,” one Agra Hills resident said during the public comment period. “Our property is threatened, our families are threatened, our health is threatened, and we are your mercy. So I will do the right thing to you all. We just beg. We know what our interests are and you cannot unleash this bell. This will cause irreparable harm to our neighbours.”
The vote also followed fierce protests in communities near the landfill. It includes a couple who blocked a truck where residents stand in traffic and enters a Calabasas reclaimed land.
More recently, dozens of protesters have gathered at a busy intersection in Granada Hills, a Los Angeles neighborhood near the Sunshine Canyon landfill. Protesters, including Casia Sparks, a Granada Hills resident, waved a handmade sign against the fragmentation plan and said, “There are no non-toxic dumps!”
“The problem is that these types of health-related issues are not instantaneous,” Sparks said as the car rang out support nearby. “We’ve been talking for decades, but we don’t want to get sick, so we don’t want someone to say, ‘Oh, maybe we shouldn’t have.” I want to stop the problem right now. We don’t want fire debris in this landfill. We don’t want that. It doesn’t belong to it. So we shouldn’t put it in. ”
Public health officials say the ashes in wildfires are likely to contain countless toxic substances from burned-out buildings, including lead brain damage and arsenic, which causes cancer. Previously, the California Department of Poison Control said testing found that it contained enough chemicals to be considered hazardous waste under California’s disposal standards.
Waste with high levels of hazardous chemicals is usually adopted in hazardous waste facilities. However, following natural disasters, emergency and disaster exemptions, potentially contaminated debris (including wildfire ash) are treated as non-hazardous waste, usually only trash and construction debris. It will be brought to the landfill.
In the aftermath of the Eaton and Palisade wildfires, federal cleanup crews began transporting the waste to local landfills before testing with ashes.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees debris removal and disposal, says contractors use water to remove debris from burned-out properties and prevent windproof dust when transporting. County officials also sought to alleviate concerns by saying that if safety protocols are followed, the risk of exposure will be minimized.
“The state has already been decided. [these landfills] “We’ve been working hard to get into the world,” said Barbara Feller, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “It’s far less likely that people will come into contact with ingestion, inhalation or touching. We rely on owners, who are landfill managers, to take necessary precautions to take by law. I’m continuing to take it.
The Board of Supervisors also held a closed door body meeting to discuss the lawsuit against fire debris from being taken to Calabasas.
Calabasas City Council unanimously directs city counsels to seek a temporary restraining order in Los Angeles County Superior Court to block LA county accepting wildfire debris at Calabasas landfills. I voted. The city’s filing cited 2,500 homes and three schools within a mile of the landfill boundary.
“The county and sanitation districts have a legal obligation to ensure that only unmanned waste is disposed of in landfills,” Mayor Peter Kraut wrote in a letter to residents last Friday. “This is necessary to prevent irreparable harm to nearby homes, schools and communities.”
Separately, Calabasas residents raised funds to hire private attorneys to file a similar case in LA County Superior Court against the county. In that case, the lawyer emphasized that there is no way to ensure the safety of nearby residents without the test.
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