As crews clean up from LA wildfires, some residents are furious over hazardous waste

DUARTE, Calif. (AP) — Not far from where Ceci Carroll lives, a rock-mining company has polluted the air with dust across the San Gabriel Valley, she said.

Now, as crews clean charred remains from the Los Angeles wildfires, she worries about a new potential source of contamination: a site to process hazardous debris from the Eaton Fire.

“I’m concerned about the community and also the school districts here, where we have children,” said Carroll, a Duarte resident of 23 years and former local school board member.

“We’re dealing with the site with the chemicals and hazardous materials,” she said. “Parents are absolutely concerned.”

Carroll is among residents from Duarte, Azusa and nearby cities opposing the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of Lario Park in Irwindale as a temporary site to separate, package and transport potentially hazardous materials from the Eaton Fire.

In ordinary times, people picnic, bike or ride horses on equestrian trails in the federally owned land. They now worry about dangerous waste that could pollute the air or seep into groundwater.

The blazes that began on Jan. 7 charred thousands of buildings, cars and electronics across the Los Angeles area. The EPA has begun the enormous task of removing potentially hundreds of tons of hazardous materials from the Eaton and Palisades fires. That includes paints, pesticides, solvents, compressed gas cylinders, ammunition and lithium-ion batteries from electric cars that could turn toxic when burned.

“The removal of these materials should not come at the cost of creating a toxic environment for communities already disproportionately impacted by pollution,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis said in a statement.

The mostly Latino communities adjacent to the site are exposed to higher levels of ozone and particulate matter pollution than other areas, according to data from the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

Experts acknowledge residents’ concerns, but say hazardous waste is not necessarily harmful as long as safety measures are in place and the waste is not stored on site for years.

Residents have questions about waste site

At a town hall Wednesday, California Sen. Susan Rubio and local mayors opposing the site grilled state and federal officials: How was the site chosen? Why weren’t we consulted or notified? Why truck toxic waste 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the burn zone and risk contaminating our communities? What testing will be done after it’s closed?

Hundreds of residents crammed into the performing arts center and spilled into the hall. They shouted “Shut it down!” and chanted “Leave it in Altadena!”

EPA coordinator Tara Fitzgerald told the audience that sites closer to the Eaton burn zone were being used for emergency fire operations, including the Rose Bowl and the Santa Anita Park in Pasadena. They chose the Lario Park site because it suited their needs and was available.

She emphasized the EPA has done this work for years across the state.

“We did the exact same thing” for the Woolsey, Santa Rosa and Napa fires, Fitzgerald said, and “we did not have any impacts to the community during the entire process.”

But the Eaton and Palisades fires are unprecedented. Together, they torched the largest urban area on record in California, according to an Associated Press analysis, and more than double the urban acreage consumed by the 2018 Woolsey Fire.

EPA says protective measures being taken

The EPA said it would regularly monitor air, sample soil, use water trucks to control dust and transport waste out of the area daily.

The agency lines areas with plastic where materials are processed and uses wattles, earthen berms and other items to control spills. The waste will be transported on surface streets, not freeways, so trucks can travel at a slower and safer speed, the EPA’s Celeste McCoy told the county Board of Supervisors. She said the site would likely be used less than six months, and more areas are being considered.

With these protective measures, the risks of groundwater contamination, which takes a long time, are low, said Sanjay Mohanty, a UCLA associate professor who has studied wildfire effects on water and soil.

“There’s several feet of soil that the pollutant has to pass through, and that also requires lots of water to leech from the system,” Mohanty said. “And even if there is leeching, they would not migrate far into the soil in a short time. “

The bigger risks are soil and air pollution from possible dust emissions, he added, but those too can be mitigated.

Residents should stay vigilant

Duarte resident Laura Jasso did not leave the meeting reassured and remained upset about the lack of transparency from state and federal officials.

“It’s hard to have confidence when they’ve really done this behind our backs,” she said.

While crews continue their work, residents should be vigilant to what is happening at the site and ask how materials are being handled, about emergency response plans and truck routes and schedules, said Rachael Jones, professor and director of the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

“The community has the right to know that information from the EPA and the Army Corps,” Jones said.

Jasso said her community is committed to holding the EPA accountable for ensuring safety.

“Ultimately, we don’t want it here, and we’re going to continue to fight to not have it here,” she said of the site. “But the fact is, it’s here right now. And so we have to just acknowledge the safety of our students, the concerns of our families.”

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Associated Press writer Christopher Weber contributed to this report.

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