With a chorus of concerns emerging over the Environmental Protection Agency utilizing Will Rogers State Beach and other areas to temporarily store waste removed from the Palisades Fire burn area, Steve Calanog, EPA Deputy Incident Commander for the Eaton and Palisades wildfire response spoke to the Daily Press about the agency’s work cleaning up after fires and their use of locations in Topanga State Park and Will Rogers Beach to store/sort debris.
He said that to clean a fire site, the EPA deploys teams of trained professionals who identify hazardous materials on site. Those materials are sorted by type on site before being sealed in bags or containers and taken to a central storage/sorting location. At the central location, the different types of waste from different trucks are consolidated and stored until there’s enough to warrant transport of that waste to a final disposal site.
Calanog addressed specific questions about the process with the Daily Press as provided below.
Why not sort on site?
Waste is sorted on site and different types of waste are transported from individual properties to the storage location where they are combined into large shipments of single-type waste.
“I think the challenge is, folks presume that we're creating a waste disposal site, which is far, far from the case. Our waste, as our teams pick it up from each individual property, is immediately containerized in a variety of different manners, depending on the waste it is transported in vehicles that are approved up to transport hazardous waste to the staging Earth, at which point it's consolidated into larger containers designed for the containment of hazardous materials, and at which point then it's loaded onto the big, big tractor trailers for ultimate transportation and disposal.”
Why not take waste directly from the burn sites to disposal?
The final sites are spread across the Western United States and transporting directly from burn sites would require thousands of trucks. Even if that many trucks did exist, the cost would be astronomical and the fleet would clog every available road.
“If we take our trucks with the variety of different waste and send them off to Utah, we don't see those trucks for a couple days. We would need hundreds upon hundreds of trucks to do it that way. That would also just compound the already very significant traffic problems and congestion, especially in the Palisades, by having that many trucks. And frankly, I don't believe there's enough trucks at our disposal to do it that way,”
Why not sort/store further away from the beach?
Storage sites are located on public land provided by municipalities. The EPA can only choose from the property they are offered and sites must meet their needs. For the Palisades Fire, the EPA needs about 20 acres of flat land and the location must be accessible to the trucks carrying waste. If the site were too far away, it would again require too many trucks increasing the time to completion and clogging local roads needed for other cleanup and recovery vehicles.
“We're trying to do this as quickly as possible so the community can begin the rebuilding process.”
What is the rush to finish the process?
Two reasons:
- President Trump has ordered the EPA to finish the bulk removal of debris by Feb. 25.
- Taking longer would increase the potential for pollution. Hazardous materials left unsecured on burn sites are exposed to the elements and may be dispersed into the environment by natural or man-made causes. The safest course of action is to quickly containerize any dangerous material and remove it from the area.
“We need these staging areas to be a base operation for the hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of personnel that we have picking up. If we don't do that in a rapid fashion, those materials continue to present a risk of release to the environment or risk to the health impact. We have to do this quick, as you know, extremely quick.”
How will waste be contained?
Waste is individually bagged/contained at the burn site. It’s then taken to the storage location where small containers will be combined into larger containers for disposal. That process occurs on a lined pad in an area surrounded by material to prevent potential leaks. Workers can prevent material from blowing away by applying water where necessary to dampen dry material and material is not left out in the open. The ground lining prevents contamination of the soil.
“Our staging areas, we take great care and precaution of installing a variety of different barriers and containment systems to ensure that if there was a release at our staging area that it would be properly contained and immediately responded to.
Again, … our team are all hazmat responders. We know how to do this. This is what we do on a day to day basis. The risk of airborne or releases and releases to the ocean are minimal, if at all possible. It's really not going to happen just due to the precautions we utilize and implement.”
How long will it take?
The EPA plans to complete Phase 1 cleanup by the end of February. Storage and sorting locations will persist for some weeks to months after the end of Phase 1.
“In these disasters, it's a bit of a fool’s errand there to try and predict. We have to take this work day by day, and adjust every day.”
How have past storage/sorting sites fared when the work is complete?
Similar procedures from past fires, including clean up following the Woolsey fire, have not resulted in any pollution. The EPA takes samples from all locations prior to establishing a storage location and conducts testing throughout their stay on the location, including the use of monitors tracking airborne particles. Should there be any evidence of contamination, it would be remediated by the EPA before they left the location.
“Frankly, there we've never left any lasting contamination for any of the fires work that we've done in the past 15 years.”
For more information about the process, visit https://www.epa.gov/ca/2025-california-wildfires.
