Finally we know where toxic ash from the L.A. wildfires could end up

Despite repeatedly warning that wildfire debris likely contains hazardous substances, public officials are preparing to dump millions of tons of contaminated ash and rubble from the Eaton and Palisades fires into Southern California landfills that were not designed to handle high concentrations of toxic chemicals.

For weeks, Los Angeles County leaders have urged residents to avoid wildfire ash. Public health officials have said they suspect the debris is teeming with brain-damaging heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals from thousands of incinerated homes and cars.

Ordinarily, when these toxic chemicals are found at high levels in solid waste, they would be disposed of at hazardous waste landfills — typically located far from densely populated areas and specifically engineered with environmental protections to prevent leakage that might affect nearby residents.

Trash trucks pass each other on the road to the Simi Valley Landfill in Ventura County, where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week that toxic ash from schools destroyed by the Eaton fire would be dumped.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

However, every year when disasters strike California, a series of emergency waivers and disaster exemptions allow for potentially contaminated debris — including wildfire ash — to be treated as nonhazardous waste and taken to landfills that typically only handle trash and construction debris.

In the aftermath of the most destructive wildfires in U.S. history, government agencies have shared little about where they plan to dispose of the estimated 4.5 million tons of charred debris from the Eaton and Palisades fires. For two weeks, officials have been peppered with questions about where the debris is going, and they have largely declined to answer.

At a news conference this week, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that federal cleanup crews began removing debris from several schools damaged by the Eaton fire, hauling toxic ash to the Simi Valley Landfill in Ventura County and asbestos and concrete to Azusa Land Reclamation in Los Angeles County.

But local, state and federal authorities have refused to name all landfills that are expected to receive wildfire debris. Los Angeles County Public Works director Mark Pestrella last week said that four landfills had been designated to accept disaster debris, but did not identify them. He walked those statements back this week, claiming that the department had identified 17 facilities within Los Angeles County and one in neighboring Ventura County that could accept this waste, while adding that disposal sites would ultimately be decided by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Homes in Atladena that were destroyed by the Eaton fire.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

But, in addition to the Simi Valley Landfill and the Azusa Land Reclamation site, The Times has learned that at least five other nonhazardous waste landfills have taken steps to accept this waste: Badlands Sanitary Landfill in Moreno Valley; Calabasas Landfill in Agoura; El Sobrante Landfill in Corona; Lamb Canyon Landfill in Beaumont; and Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Sylmar.

Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a disaster proclamation to expedite wildfire debris disposal, allowing state environmental regulators to temporarily suspend solid waste disposal rules and permit these landfills to accept wildfire debris. In turn, these landfills — many of which accept municipal garbage — have applied for emergency waivers to expand their daily disposal tonnage, extend their operating hours and accept potentially contaminated fire debris.

In the past, state environmental regulators have issued violations for dumping hazardous waste, including lead-contaminated soil, at these landfills, citing the risk it poses to groundwater.

For their part, officials overseeing the cleanup say it’s in the public’s best interest to clear hazardous ash and debris from residential neighborhoods as soon as possible, and that includes expediting the disposal process. The Simi Valley and Calabasas landfills had previously accepted disaster debris from the Woolsey fire, which destroyed over 1,600 buildings in 2018.

“The ash and debris from the wildfires are fire-damaged materials, which are different from regular household waste, but they do not meet the classification of ‘hazardous waste’ under federal regulations,” said Susan Lee, spokesperson for the Army Corps.

On at least three occasions, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has hired consultants to assess the levels of heavy metals in wildfire ash from burned homes. In all three reports (from 2003, 2007 and 2015), the state contractor found that the ash from home sites contained enough heavy metals — including brain-damaging lead — to be considered hazardous waste by California standards.

Trucks queue up on San Fernando Road in Sylmar waiting to turn into Sunshine Canyon Landfill in 2023.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Southern California residents and environmental groups have expressed concern about the safety of trucking this material through the community and the ability of municipal landfills to properly handle toxic material.

Erick Fefferman, who lives about a mile south of Sunshine Canyon, said he and his neighbors worry that hazardous ash and soot could get stirred up and drift into their neighborhood when wildfire debris is buried nearby, posing a risk that they might inhale dangerous heavy metals.

Sunshine Canyon, L.A. County’s largest active landfill, is perched above the Granada Hills and Sylmar neighborhoods, in a mountain pass known for its strong winds that regularly blow rancid odors — due to excessive sulfur dioxide emissions — and dust into the communities below.

Last year, the South Coast Air Quality Management District cited Sunshine Canyon for more than 60 violations for excessive air pollution and nuisance odor violations. Fefferman said he recently pulled his son out of Van Gogh Elementary School due to the stench and pollution, which sometimes became so unbearable that school officials canceled recess.

And although landfill operators routinely monitor for potentially dangerous gases, such as methane or sulfur dioxide, they typically don’t have instruments that would detect toxic contaminants in wildfire ash, like lead or asbestos.

“Sunshine Canyon Landfill has shown itself incapable of processing the household waste that already goes to their facility,” said Fefferman. “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.”

The community concerns have been heightened by the accelerated pace of the hazardous waste cleanup. Initially, the plan was for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to spend three months on the project; but last week, President Trump signed a federal directive to shorten the cleanup time to 30 days.

“What happens when they skip over or miss a lithium-ion battery, from a cellphone battery, or part of a car battery — and it gets in there — and then combusts?” Fefferman asked, noting that the recently closed Chiquita Canyon Landfill near Santa Clarita is dealing with garbage burning deep underground from a chemical reaction.

EPA crews in white hazmat suits comb the ruins of homes burned in the Palisades fire.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

The Army Corps says it has a plan. Cleanup workers will use water to suppress any dust, said Col. Eric Swenson, and will wrap ash in plastic bags and transport them in trucks with plastic liners and tarps. And Pestrella, the county public works director, said that landfills that will accept wildfire ash are equipped with a liner system that prevents contaminants from leaking into the groundwater.

But these precautions have not quelled the concerns of some residents.

Wayde Hunter, president of the North Valley Coalition of Concerned Citizens, has long said Sunshine Canyon has mismanaged its operations in the northern San Fernando Valley. Now, he worries that the landfill will become ground zero for a dangerous experiment in which government officials are blurring the lines between what constitutes a hazardous waste facility and a municipal landfill.

The decision to put untested but possibly hazardous waste in Sunshine Canyon, Hunter said, doesn’t consider the landfill’s proximity to residences and the potential for groundwater contamination in the event that the landfill’s liner system is damaged due to an earthquake.

“The reason they make [nonhazardous waste] landfills,” said Hunter, “is because they don’t want the kind of material that they’re now trying to shove into them.”

Although quickly removing the fire debris provides relief for the disaster-gripped communities of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Hunter hopes public officials consider the potential fallout that could occur in his community and others neighboring potential disposal sites sprinkled across Southern California.

“We feel for those people,” Hunter said, referring to the wildfire-damaged neighborhoods. “But, by the same token, [cleanup and disposal] needs to be done properly. We can’t just start dumping this stuff at every landfill.”