A Will Rogers State Beach parking lot will be used as a temporary processing site for debris from the Palisades fire zone, the state parks department announced Wednesday afternoon.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will use the parking lot as a temporary staging area for potentially hazardous household items — such as paint, bleach, asbestos, propane tanks and lithium-ion batteries — removed from the fire zone, California State Parks said in a statement. The debris will be sorted and stored before being shipped to specialized facilities for disposal.
Hazardous household items must be removed before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can begin clearing debris from burned homes and businesses. How to handle that material has become a thorny political problem.
Federal and local officials are facing competing pressures to clear the waste as quickly as possible while facing backlash from residents and officials who don’t want the sites in their neighborhoods. The agreement to use Will Rogers State Beach was quickly decried by the Los Angeles City Council member who represents that stretch of coastal Los Angeles.
“Everybody says go ahead and do it, just don’t do it near me — it’s human nature,” said Steve Soboroff, the chief recovery officer for the city of Los Angeles. “But the reality is this stuff has to get out of there. Every day it’s left there, you’re leaving hazardous material in your neighborhood.”
The Will Rogers parking lot is “suitable because it is flat, open land in close proximity to damaged properties that require debris removal,” and its use will help residents rebuild more quickly, the state parks agency said in a statement.
The Will Rogers announcement came two days after a special Malibu City Council meeting during which residents and elected officials balked at a request by the EPA to open a hazardous waste site on a smaller lot in Malibu near multiple schools. Members of the Malibu council pushed federal officials on why the Will Rogers lot — which, unlike the Malibu space, is in the burn zone — was not being used.
“I can’t encourage you to put this site across the street from us, so close to all these kids, homes and so forth when you’ve got Will Rogers down there, that has no homes around it — it’s already ready to go,” Mayor Doug Stewart said.
Robert Fenton, a regional administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said at the time that the agency had asked to use Will Rogers and had been denied. It remains unclear what changed regarding the site’s use or who was responsible for the original denial.
The parking lot at Will Rogers State Beach is a California State Parks property operated by Los Angeles County.
In an email to The Times, Nicole Mooradian, a spokeswoman for the L.A. County Dept. of Beaches & Harbors, said the decision to use the parking lot as a staging area “was made at a higher level” than the county.
Constance Farrell, a spokeswoman for L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, said in an email that the county had not denied any location for EPA staging and that “we need to move as safely and quickly as possible to move through the cleanup process.” The Palisades fire zone is in Horvath’s district.
Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades on the Los Angeles City Council, said she was dismayed by the news of the EPA site at Will Rogers and had “repeatedly” suggested alternative locations in her council district within the burn scar.
“I have been very, very vocal to the EPA that storing hazardous material at the beach, any beach, does not seem like a good idea,” Park said in an interview. She said she feared an exceptionally high tide or debris flows from the hillside above could carry hazardous waste into the ocean and harm an “incredibly sensitive” coastal marine environment.
“We have bent over backwards for decades to protect and restore our Santa Monica Bay, so using it as a site to sort, stage and store hazardous materials feet from the ocean is concerning,” Park said.
Park said she had pushed for other government-owned properties, such as parking lots, to be used instead. She said she spoke with the governor’s office, FEMA and the EPA on Tuesday about the possibility of using the site and conveyed her concerns. But she said she was “not a decision maker” in this.
The EPA has faced pushback over multiple proposed processing sites as the agency tries to expedite hazardous waste cleanup. The process was initially projected to last three months, but the Trump administration accelerated the timeline to 30 days.
Debris collection sites already in use at Lario Park in Irwindale and along Pacific Coast Highway near Topanga Canyon Boulevard have faced heated protests.
In Malibu, residents and officials blasted the proposed use of a lot near Malibu City Hall at the corner of Webb Way and Civic Center Way. The site is half a mile from two elementary school campuses: the public Webster Elementary School and private Our Lady of Malibu School, a Catholic campus. It also is less than a quarter of a mile from the Santa Monica College Malibu Campus and one mile from Pepperdine University.
Staging areas are temporary storage sites where hazardous materials are sorted and prepared for final disposal elsewhere. Federal officials have said it does more harm to the environment to leave the debris uncovered in the burn zone than to move it to staging sites where it can be covered and maintained in a controlled environment.
Tara Fitzgerald, an EPA incident commander, said at the Malibu City Council meeting that waste does not touch the ground at the staging areas but is stored in thick, sealed plastic drums and bags inside a tent with protective flooring.
She said the sites take in large lithium-ion batteries, like those in electric vehicles, which cannot be placed in landfills. Fire-damaged batteries pose a safety risk because they can “spontaneously explode, ignite or release toxic gases,” she said. At staging areas, the batteries are de-energized, disassembled, recycled and disposed of safely, she said.
“We have struggled to find locations where local agencies are supportive of our work, although we are expected to do it,” Fitzgerald said.
Stewart, the mayor of Malibu, said he welcomed the use of the Will Rogers lot as a staging area, calling it “an important step” in moving toward rebuilding. Malibu City Councilman Bruce Silverstein said in an email that the state’s announcement was “a great example of residents being heard and the federal government taking appropriate and timely action to accommodate various competing interests.”
Last week, protesters gathered at the staging area off Topanga Canyon Boulevard wearing white hazmat suits and carrying signs that read, “Protect Topanga” and “No toxic debris at Topanga Lagoon.”
Diana Mathur, a Topanga resident, said she was worried that lithium-ion batteries brought to the site for processing could contaminate the nearby Topanga Lagoon, which sits at the mouth of Topanga Creek. She said she also was concerned that the presence of toxic waste in the area could discourage people from seeking out wellness businesses in Topanga.
“I’m worried people could be deterred from seeking out those alternative health modalities,” Mathur said.
EPA spokesman Rusty Harris-Bishop told the protesters that the work happening with the Palisades fire debris was similar to what the EPA did in Hawaii after the 2023 wildfires on Maui, including draining energy from lithium-ion batteries using a brining solution. Since then, he said, the EPA has trained fire departments across the country on that protocol.
“I bet that went really well!” a protester shouted.
“It did, actually,” Harris-Bishop said.
