EPA Unable To Remove HazMat From About 198 Properties In Malibu, Job May Fall To Army In Phase 2
Written by 991KBU on February 14, 2025
The EPA says it remains on track to complete its Phase-1 hazardous debris removal work by the end of the month. But KBUU News has learned … the EPA has given up trying to remove hazardous material at 198 fire wreckage locations in Malibu.
Half of those houses are on the beach. The others are scattered uphill …in the Big Rock .. Las Flores and La Costa areas.
Those 198 houses are deemed too dangerous for EPA to enter … due to the terrain, or dangers presented by the unstable structures, sources tell KBUU. The agency has released a map that shows nearly half of the burned lots in Malibu … where EPA attempted hazmat removal … could not be stripped of hazardous substances.
Instead … the EPA will let the Army Corps of Engineers remove the hazmat during the phase 2 operation … the same time it removes general fire debris.
That’s a major change.
And 198 is a lot of hazmat that will now get carted off with general fire debris.
Army public affairs workers have not been able to answer a reporter’s emailed questions. It’s not clear if the Army removal contractors will have to treat an entire burned house as hazmat material … or if that additional hazmat waste has to be taken to the hazmat sorting sites at Topanga Beach Motel … or Will Rogers Beach.
KBUU asked the federal government for clarification on all this Thursday … no reply yet.
The EPA says it has removed all hazardous material at 32 lots as of Thursday in Malibu and Topanga Beach … most of those along PCH … many on the beach.
Of those 198 locations where the hazmat could not be removed … says the EPA … “parcel conditions (have) precluded EPA from completing Phase 1.”
Many are along the narrow oceanfront drop off … between the surf and the highway,
This means the hazmat is still sitting there … waiting to be scraped away during the Phase 2 debris removal removal undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Doe this mean a drastic increase in the amount of general debris … being hauled to hazmat dumps?
Does this mean some of the general debris will have to be unloaded and sorted at the two EPA hazmat yards … at Topanga beach Motel and Will Rogers beach??
We don’t know.
The White House has issued a 30-day timeline for the removal hazardous household waste.
It appears almost certain that EPA will miss that deadline … as nearly half of the lots it enters are unsafe.
The fees say their crews will continue training and readiness efforts during the storm … work will resume as soon as EPA and Army Corps safety monitors allow.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said this week the beginning of Phase 2 debris-removal work was occurring with “unprecedented” speed.
It began just 35 days since the fires erupted.
Newsom says that is twice as fast as the process took following the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Federal officials say the hazardous waste materials sorting yards at Topanga Motel … and Will Rogers beach … were well above flood levels and should have made it through this week’s floods.
But that has not been confirmed yet.
The EPA tells KBUU news that the elevation throughout their staging area at the parking lot of Will Rogers State Beach varies between 15-26 ft above mean sea level.
And the Topanga sorting center is even higher above the creek and the ocean level.
The plan was to have had all of the hazardous material trucked out before the storm peaked.
For phase one … the removal of hazardous material … the EPA stopped field operations Thursday due to rain. For phase two … debris removal .. the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reduced debris removal operations.
