City, residents protest against fire debris in the Calabasas landfill

Dozens of people gathered outside the Calabasas landfill in Agoura Hills on Saturday morning to protest against plans to throw up to 5,000 tonnes of debris per day as part of a massive cleaning operation at the Following devastating forest fires from the County Los Angeles last month.

“Let’s be without toxic,” chanted the group, which included children and families. “No discharge!” They shouted.

The demonstration comes as the body of American army engineers this week began the second phase of cleaning Eaton and Palisades fires, which destroyed more than 9,400 structures in Altadena and more than 6,800 in the Pacific palisades.

Calabasas discharge is one of the discharges with at least seven non -hazard waste in southern California approved to accept waste – in particular chimneys, dangerous trees and fire debris and ashes – of the latter Cleaning phase.

The army body could start transporting debris to the discharge on Monday, according to the city of Calabasas. To accommodate the withdrawal of debris, the county approved last week a derogation extending the operating hours of the discharge and increasing the daily limit of the tonnage by 3,500 tonnes per day to 5,000.

The demonstration came one day after the Calabasas municipal council sent a letter to the County Supervisor adviceExpressing his “strong opposition” to all the fire debris transported and eliminated in the discharge, which is near the neighborhoods, schools, housing for the elderly, wild parks and other sensitive sites. In the letter, the Council implored county officials, states and federals to explore other elimination options, including the redirection of waste to areas with low population outside the State.

“The municipal council is forced to echo the public feeling that the urgency of the recovery phase and the efforts to resolve a disaster is to lay the foundations for future public health and the environmental disasters that will affect residents of Calabasas” , wrote the leaders of the city. The Council ordered the city prosecutor of Calabasas to request an injunction at the level of the state or federal government, they wrote.

The American environmental protection agency began the first phase Cleaning fire debris on January 28, eliminating dangerous materials such as paint, cleaners and solvents, oils, pesticides, lithium batteries and asbestos of the burned areas.

The agency transports dangerous materials to temporary staging areas: Lario Park in Irwindale and the Altadena golf course for the Debris of the Eaton fire, and the former Motel of Topanga Ranch and Will Rogers State Beach For the late palisades. The debris will then be sorted, secure and packaged for transport to authorized elimination installations.

Residents and leaders of the Comté de Los Angeles counterfeit communities have raised concerns On the health and environmental risks that could be laid down by the Lario Park site, with managers from the cities of Duarte, Azusa, Irwindale and Baldwin Park last month expressing their joint opposition to the use of the site.

The EPA said that it would take measures to guarantee security on the Lario Park site, including air quality monitoring, the use of a truck-basis to remove dust and emissions , as well as continuous environmental tests of the site after its closure.

Fire ash and debris collected during the second cleaning phase will be transported in dubbed trucks and led to approved discharges – which, as well as the Calabasas discharge, include the Sim Valley discharge, the Site Reformation Site State of the Azusa lands, the sanitary discharge of Badlands in Moreno Valley, El Sobran Landfill in Corona, Lamb Canyon Landfill in Beaumont and Sunshine Canyon Landfill in Sylmar.

Cleaning will include thousands of entrepreneurs from the army and private companies working to have up to 4.5 million tonnes of fire debris.

The demonstration on Saturday was organized by Protect Calabasas, who also plans to request an injunction to stop the spill of fire debris in the discharge while the problem passes before the courts.

Law application agents arrived at around 30 minutes after the start of the demonstration to prevent the group from blocking traffic near the landfill, according to participant Kelly Rapf Martino. Later, the group worked on Lost Hills Road, holding panels with hand -scribbled slogans like: “Listen to mothers !! No toxic spill to Calabasas! And finally arriving in a nearby Erewhon market.

“We are very concerned about the microscopic particles which are in the ashes and the debris thrown into a discharge into a residential community,” said Martino, mother of two children and member of Protect Calabasas who lives in a district at the base of the discharge of the discharge. She said that she was particularly concerned about harmful asbestos particles that are potentially found in the discharge.

She underlined the comments made by Colonel Brian Sawser of the Corps of the Army at the meeting of the Calabasas municipal council on Wednesday. He explained that before starting the cleaning process, the army’s body roamed the soil of each property, looking for visible dangerous materials, then testing each house for asbestos. If asbestos was found, he said, they would extend the entire site in accordance with the regulations of the state and federal and delete any material containing asbestos, which would then go a flow of waste that does not did not head for the discharge of Calabasas.

However, he told the council that he could not be 100% certain that dangerous materials would not be found in the discharge, saying: “I taught the probability and statistics at West Point, so I will have Bad to be 100% certain in anything. “”

The members of Protect Calabasas call residents to protest outside the landfill on Monday morning, when trucks carrying fire debris could start to arrive.

“We are only a lot of mothers who seek to protect our children, our schools, our health, not wanting to become enormous in 20 years where a group of children is sick and we must continue for damages “Said Martino. “We are trying to stop this before it happens.”