Dear Topanga Community,
We are in the process of finalizing a memo intended for the EPA, State Parks, CalOES, and all of our elected officials from the County on up to Congressman Brad Sherman’s Office. We do appreciate that our elected representatives and the EPA are under a serious time constraint, but we do not see why selecting a different site — or a different removal protocol — will take that much additional time. Under major emergency conditions, decisions like this can be made (or revised) quite rapidly — in a matter of hours to days in most cases. We have no reason to believe that the EPA would take umbrage at switching locations if they were asked to do so by our elected officials — especially if that alternate location met their criteria and could be set up quickly.
Please know that we are grateful for the responses that we have received thus far to our inquiries, but there are still far too many important safety, logistical, and pragmatic questions left unanswered — or partially answered. It is not enough to simply share a standard EPA template with us as to the entity’s clean-up plans. This community wants and deserves to know more. And it deserves a seat at the table — as do the Tribal leaders who originally claimed this land.
We have reached out to the Supervisor’s Office to ask for a Zoom Town Hall on this issue, but we think that it would be ideal if Congressman Sherman’s Office could partner with the Supervisor’s Office on this event to ensure that we can bring in all the key decision-makers at every level of government.
Key points from the Topanga Town Council Memo:
- We want to explain why the intersection of Topanga Canyon Boulevard (TCB) & the
Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in Topanga is a particularly risky location for any entity
claiming to be interested in protecting the environment. While the hazardous site may be
temporary (we’re hearing 3 to 12+ months), the long-term damage it could potentially cause (based on other similar large-scale disasters where the EPA stepped in) will not be. - What were the criteria that the EPA used to select this site and deem the TCB & PCH intersection as “the best choice”? These criteria should be made public if there is ever to be any public acceptance of this choice.
- The nomenclature around this site (“waste sorting site”) strikes many as a game of semantics. Essentially, we will have tons (~660 tons if we extrapolate from the Lahaina clean-up where 2,200 homes were lost) of hazardous waste consolidated on a plot/adjoining plots of land — some of which could be stored there for days or weeks at a time before it is trucked out and new toxic waste is brought in. Whatever the EPA chooses to call this toxic amalgam, it sounds a lot like an above-ground hazardous waste dump to many folks.
- The press release that the EPA sent out on January 29th explaining how it will handle the waste was extremely underwhelming in terms of inspiring confidence in the community that there will not be significant toxic leakage. A lot of the explanations were vague and sounded like boilerplate language with no guarantees. (Again, if the Lahaina disaster is any indication, the EPA will not actually do everything that they claim they will do, and there will be no penalties or recourse for their lack of care).
- All plastic tarps that are readily commercially available are permeable. Even very high-end plastic “tarps” have a small amount of permeability. This waste needs to be much better contained — on truly impermeable surfaces — that can be fully and reliably protected from rain on all sides, including the top. Otherwise, much of this stored debris will simply wash straight into the lagoon and ocean.
- We will explain the deep ties to environmental protection that this community has held sacred for decades, including the many thousands of hours that we have all spent on beach and creek clean-ups over the years. We have also fought hard against very powerful interests to strictly limit/eliminate pesticide use in our Watershed. Our concerns do not stem from NIMBYism but a profound commitment to the sanctity of the natural environment. The siting of a toxic waste/sorting site here would be sacrilege in cultural terms.
- The siting of this hazardous waste site will exert additional pressure on maintaining a road closure that nobody wants and from which the majority of the community is actively suffering in several ways.
- This road closure is destroying businesses. The above-ground “hazardous waste” site will add insult to injury. The waste site (and knowledge that it is there — whether or not it is visible) will be a significant deterrent to visitors even if the road closure were lifted tomorrow. Even with SBA Disaster assistance (which consists entirely of LOANS that MUST be repaid), these businesses are unlikely to make it beyond another few weeks. Some were forced to close permanently after the extended landslide closure last spring (which lasted almost 4 months). We cannot let extended road closures become the norm. At the very least, some provisions should be made to have the road open on weekends and other peak shopping, school transport and commuting times.
- The road closure is upending the lives of commuters and parents of school-aged children. (To their credit, Caltrans is trying to actively come up with solutions for these commuters, parents, and businesses, and I give them a lot of credit for that.)
- Lastly, we take little comfort in being told that the EPA will be using “experts” who know how to do this type of clean-up. We currently have as the Administrator of the EPA a man named Lee Zeldin — someone who endorses fracking (and all the toxic chemicals that process entails) and has implied that his desire is to reduce or eliminate the ability of the EPA to hold polluters accountable. That kind of leadership does not give many of us much faith in how this process will be handled.
- We urge you to set up a virtual (or in-person if you’d prefer) Town Hall as soon as possible and invite the entire community. The Topanga Town Council would be happy to assist you in doing so. We have great compassion and appreciation for the many issues that you are dealing with at the moment, but we cannot and will not sacrifice the commitment we have made to this community to preserve and protect it. We are confident that you feel the same and would like to partner with us in addressing the many concerns that this community has and the hardships that it is facing.
Topanga community members concerned about the decision to locate the waste sorting site from the Palisades Fire at the intersection of Topanga Canyon Blvd and the Pacific Coast Highway are encouraged to write directly to the EPA Incident Commander, EPA representative, and our elected officials, as listed below:
EPA Incident Manager:
Steve Calanog
Calanog.steve@epa.gov
EPA Representative
Rusty Harris-Bishop
harris-bishop.rusty@epa.gov
Los Angeles County Department of Public Works:
Mark Pestrella
mpestrella@dpw.lacounty.gov
California Dept of Parks and Recreation Director
Armando Quintero
Armando.Quintero@parks.ca.gov
Director of Infrastructure and Community Services, LA County 3rd District Supervisor’s Office
Maria Chong Castillo
MCCastillo@bos.lacounty.gov
Regional Planning Deputy, LA County 3rd District Supervisor’s Office
Dylan Sittig, LA County
Dsittig@bos.lacounty.gov
LA County 3rd District Supervisor Lindsey Horvath
ThirdDistrict@bos.lacounty.gov
CA Senator Ben Allen
Senator.Allen@senate.CA.gov
CA Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin
Assemblymember.irwin@assembly.ca.gov
U.S. Congressman Brad Sherman
Mail@bradsherman.com
CA Governor Gavin Newson
Gavin.newsom@gov.ca.gov
Gov. Newsom Chief of Staff
Ann O’Leary
Ann.oleary@gov.ca.gov
Kind regards,
Carrie Carrier, President
Topanga Town Council