Anaheim and Yorba Linda are part of the Orange County Water District — a public agency that manages the region’s groundwater and that helped to design, fund and build the PFAS filtration plants. Orange County has a head start on solutions. But with the size of the PFAS problem across the country, its claims on having the largest PFAS treatment plants of their kind in the nation could soon be eclipsed.
What is PFAS? PFAS refers to a large class of man-made chemicals used to waterproof and stainproof manufactured products. Some PFAS chemicals have been linked with various health problems, such as weakened immune systems, high cholesterol and certain cancers.
The backstory: Across the country the Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are thousands of water systems, serving around 100 million people, that have harmful levels of PFAS in their drinking water. Under an EPA rule finalized in April, affected water districts will have to take action to clean their water supplies.
How Yorba Linda does it: There are 22 tanks that are packed half-full with a kind of resin — special polymer beads — that pull PFAS out of the water. Every gallon of water pumped from the district’s wells now passes through a few of these tanks for treatment, before going to the homes and businesses of 80,000 people
What's next: The new EPA PFAS standards are stricter than California's. Across Orange County, more than 100 wells have exceeded the EPA’s new standards. Fixing the problem in the county is expected to cost $1.8 billion dollars over 30 years, according to Orange County Water District.
Yorba Linda is a small, sunny city southeast of Los Angeles. It’s perhaps best known for being the birthplace of President Richard Nixon.
But in the past few years, Yorba Linda has picked up another distinction: It’s home to the nation’s largest per- and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) water treatment plant of its kind, according to the city. PFAS, sometimes called "forever chemicals," are a type of chemical used to waterproof and stainproof manufactured products, like some nonstick cookware and upholstery.
“This December will be [three] years we've been running, and we’re the largest PFAS treatment plant using resin,” said J. Wayne Miller, former board president at the Yorba Linda Water District, for whom the plant is named.
Across the country the Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are thousands of water systems, serving around 100 million people, that have harmful levels of PFAS in their drinking water. Under an EPA rule finalized in April, affected water districts will have to take action to clean their water supplies.
Why Yorba Linda is a leader
In Orange County, the Yorba Linda treatment plant and others around it provide examples of how it can be done. The plant took over a long, narrow strip of the water district’s parking lot, not quite the length of a football field. A series of giant tanks sit atop a concrete platform.
“Honestly, they look like large propane cylinders,” said Todd Colvin, chief water system operator for the district.
Tanks to remove PFAS from drinking water at the Yorba Linda Water District's treatment plant have taken over a strip of the parking lot.
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Each tank looms about 10 feet tall and can hold around 4,500 gallons. There are 22 of them, arranged in a double row, painted pristine ivory white. The tanks are packed half-full with a kind of resin — special polymer beads — that pull PFAS out of the water.
Every gallon of water pumped from the district’s wells now passes through a few of these tanks for treatment, before going to the homes and businesses of 80,000 people.
The Yorba Linda Water District built the largest PFAS water treatment plant of its kind because it had a big PFAS problem. In February 2020, the water district had to take all of its wells offline because they were drawing groundwater contaminated with PFAS.
PFAS are a large class of man-made chemicals, some of which have been linked with various health problems, such as weakened immune systems, high cholesterol and certain cancers.
In Yorba Linda, all 10 of the district’s groundwater wells exceeded California’s recommended PFAS levels, which took effect in 2020 — 40 parts per trillion for PFOS and 10 parts per trillion for PFOA, two common PFAS chemicals. Water providers in the state that exceeded those limits had to stop using contaminated water or notify the public.
Those state limits, established four years before the EPA set national limits, put California’s cities ahead of the curve.
“I thank my lucky stars we were on the front end of that,” said Mark Toy, general manager of the Yorba Linda Water District.
Filtration plants cost less than imported water
The next city over is Anaheim, home to Disneyland. A few miles from Space Mountain, a paved industrial lot houses the second-largest PFAS water treatment plant of its kind.
“This would be a little bit larger than a basketball court,” said Mike Lyster, spokesman for the city, estimating the footprint of the 20 filtration tanks at this site.
Lyster said there was a brief time when Anaheim had the largest PFAS treatment plant.
“Kudos to Yorba Linda,” he said. “We're glad to see somebody else beat it because that means somebody else is addressing the issue.”
Anaheim is a larger city, and the public water utility there can provide water for upwards of 500,000 people a day. Back in 2020, when California’s PFAS rules came into effect, Anaheim took 14 of its 19 wells offline for excess PFAS.
If high levels of PFAS are found in drinking water, a water provider can switch to a source without the chemicals in it or filter them out.
At first, both Anaheim and Yorba Linda swapped mostly to water imported from northern California and the Colorado River that met the state standards. But water from those sources can cost twice as much as local groundwater.
Lyster said Anaheim’s water expenses went up by about $2 million a month.
So Anaheim and Yorba Linda fast-tracked construction of those big filtration tanks, to get their wells back in action.
The new EPA PFAS standards are even stricter than California’s: no more than 4 parts per trillion each for PFOA and PFOS, and additional limits for several other PFAS chemicals.
By the EPA’s standards, Anaheim’s remaining wells are now considered contaminated. Lyster said the city will expand its PFAS treatment capacity to comply with the federal rule by 2029. All told, building PFAS filtration for all 19 of Anaheim’s wells is projected to cost $200 million.
Anaheim and Yorba Linda are part of the Orange County Water District — a public agency that manages the region’s groundwater and that helped to design, fund and build the PFAS filtration plants.
Across Orange County, more than 100 wells have exceeded the EPA’s new standards. Fixing the problem in the county is expected to cost $1.8 billion dollars over 30 years, according to OCWD.
Pollution from the past is still present
Where is all the PFAS coming from? In Orange County, one of the primary culprits appears to be the Santa Ana River.
Almost a hundred miles long, the Santa Ana River flows through mountains and canyons, the cities and suburbs of San Bernardino and Riverside. Along the way, it picks up PFAS.
“We find it in some of just the natural runoff that goes into the river during the winter, during storms,” said Jason Dadakis, executive director of water quality and technical resources at the Orange County Water District. ”We also detect some PFAS coming out of the sewage treatment plants upstream.”
There’s also the legacy of factories and military bases in the area.
PFAS is found in runoff that makes its way into the Santa Ana River during the winter, says Jason Dadakis, executive director for water quality and technical resources for the Orange County Water District.
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In Orange County — the Santa Ana River’s last stop before the Pacific Ocean — some of the river water gets diverted to ponds where it can seep into the ground and refill the groundwater, which may have contributed to the contamination, Dadakis said.
And while the PFAS problem in Orange County is currently confined to the northern and central parts of the groundwater basin, Dadakis said wells that aren’t contaminated today could be in the future, based on how water moves underground.
“We know that we may have to be prepared to install additional treatment on those wells as they become impacted,” he said.
Orange County has a head start on solutions. But with the size of the PFAS problem across the country, its claims on having the largest PFAS treatment plants of their kind in the nation could soon be eclipsed.
Fresh Air film critic Justin Chang says most of his favorite films this year were made overseas, including his No. 1 pick, Sirāt.
The bad news: Anyone will tell you that these are tumultuous, borderline-apocalyptic times for the film industry. Box office is down. The threat of AI looms. Billionaires and tech giants are laying waste to what remains of the major Hollywood studios.
The good news: Chang says he saw more terrific new movies this year than any year since before the pandemic. True, most of those movies weren't from here, but all of them played in U.S. theaters in 2025, and all of them are well worth seeking out in the weeks and months to come.
Read on ... for the list and trailers.
Anyone will tell you that these are tumultuous, borderline-apocalyptic times for the film industry. Box office is down. The threat of AI looms. Billionaires and tech giants are laying waste to what remains of the major Hollywood studios. I'm not entirely sure how to square all this bad news with my own good news, which is that I saw more terrific new movies this year than I have any year since before the pandemic. True, most of those movies weren't from here, but all of them played in U.S. theaters in 2025, and all of them are well worth seeking out in the weeks and months to come.
The best new movie I saw this year is a breakthrough work from a gifted Spanish filmmaker named Oliver Laxe. It's a nail-biting survival thriller, set in the desert of southern Morocco during what feels like the end-times. It's a little Mad Max, a little Wages of Fear, and all in all, the most exhilarating and devastating two hours I experienced in a theater this year. Sirāt also features the year's best original score, composed by the electronic musician Kangding Ray.
Paul Thomas Anderson's much-loved, much-debated reimagining of Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland is an exuberant mash-up of action-thriller and political satire. One Battle After Another stars Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his best and funniest performances as an aging revolutionary drawn back into the field. He leads an ensemble that includes Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall and the terrific discovery, Chase Infiniti.
Caught by the Tides is an unclassifiable hybrid of fiction and nonfiction from the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Drawn from a mix of archival footage and newly shot material, it's a one-of-a-kind portrait of the myriad transformations that China has gone through over the past two decades.
4. Resurrection
Resurrection, another structurally bold Chinese title, is a bit like an Avatar moviefor film buffs. Placing us in the head of a shapeshifting protagonist, the director, Bi Gan, takes us on a gorgeous, dreamlike odyssey through various cinema genres, from historical spy drama to vampire thriller.
My No. 5 movie is the year's best documentary: My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, from the director Julia Loktev. It's a sprawling yet intimate portrait of several Russian independent journalists in the harrowing months leading up to President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a portrait of anti-authoritarian resistance, it pairs nicely with my No. 6 movie.
The Secret Agent is an emotionally rich, sneakily funny and continually surprising drama from the director Kleber Mendonça Filho. Set in 1977, it lays bare the personal cost of dissidence during Brazil's military dictatorship.
7. Sound of Falling
Although not a horror film, exactly, this German drama qualifies as the best and spookiest haunted-house movie I've seen this year. Directed by Mascha Schilinski, Sound of Falling teases out the connections among four generations of girls and young women who have passed through the same remote farmhouse.
8. April
April, from the director Dea Kulumbegashvili, is a tough, bleak, but utterly hypnotic portrait of a skilled OB-GYN trying to provide health care for women in a conservative East Georgian village. It may be set far from the U.S., but the difficulties these women face would resonate in any setting.
Directed by Rungano Nyoni, this Zambian film is a subtly mesmerizing drama about a death that takes place in a middle-class household, setting off a chain of dark revelations that threaten to tear a family apart.
It Was Just an Accident, which won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, is a shattering moral thriller from the Iranian director Jafar Panahi. It centers on a group of former political prisoners who are given a rare chance at retribution. In the past, Panahi has been a prisoner in Iran himself, and earlier this month, the government sentenced the director in absentia to a year in prison. I hope that Panahi never sees the inside of a jail cell again, and that his movie is seen as far and wide as possible.
Copyright 2025 NPR
Robert Garrova
explores the weird and secret bits of SoCal that would excite even the most jaded Angelenos. He also covers mental health.
Published December 13, 2025 5:00 AM
Interior of Healing Force of the Universe records in Pasadena, where a benefit concert is held on Sunday to help fire survivors build back their record collections.
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Topline:
This Sunday, a special donation concert at Pasadena's Healing Force of the Universe record store helps fire survivors get their vinyl record collections back.
The backstory: The record donation effort is the brainchild of musician Brandon Jay, who founded the nonprofit Altadena Musicians after losing his home and almost all of his family’s musical instruments in the Eaton Fire. Now, he has turned his efforts on rebuilding people's lost record collections.
Read on ... to find details of the show happening Sunday.
In the wake of the Eaton Fire, Altadena and Pasadena’s music community have really shown up to support fire survivors, especially fellow musicians who lost instruments and record collections.
That effort continues this weekend with a special donation concert at a Pasadena record store, with the aim of getting vinyl records back in the hands of survivors who lost their collections.
“You know, our name is Healing Force of the Universe, and I think that gives me a pretty clear direction… especially after the fires,” said Austin Manuel, founder of Pasadena record store, where Sunday’s show will be held.
The record donation effort is the brainchild of musician Brandon Jay, who founded the nonprofit Altadena Musicians after losing his home and almost all of his family’s instruments in the Eaton Fire. Through Altadena Musicians’s donation and registry platform, Jay said he and his partners have helped some 1,200 fire survivors get their music instruments back.
Brandon Jay.
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Now, that effort has fanned out to restoring vinyl record collections.
“All of that stuff evaporated for thousands of people,” Jay said. “Look at your own record collection and be like, ‘Wow, what if that whole thing disappeared?’”
You might know Jay from several bands over the years, including Lutefisk, a 1990s alt-rock band based in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Gwendolyn Sanford, composed music for TV shows, including Orange is the New Black and Weeds.
Jay plans to play some holiday tunes at Sunday's record donation show (which LAist is the media sponsor), along with fellow musician Daniel Brummel of Sanglorians. Brummel, who was also a founding member of Pasadena’s indie-rock sensation Ozma, said he was grateful to Jay for his fire recovery work and to Manuel for making Healing Force available for shows like this.
Brummel, who came close to losing his own home in the Eaton Fire, recalled a show he played at Healing Force back in March.
Ryen Slegr (left) and Daniel Brummel perform with their band, Ozma, on the 2014 Weezer Cruise.
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“The trauma of the fires was still really fresh,” Brummel said. After playing a cover of Rufus Wainwright’s “Going to a Town,” that night — which includes the lyrics “I’m going to a town that has already been burnt down” — Brummel said his neighbors in the audience told him the rendition hit them hard. “It felt really powerful. And without that space, it just wouldn’t have occurred.”
Details
Healing Force of the Universe Record Donation Show Featuring: Quasar (aka Brandon Jay), Sanglorians (Daniel Brummel) and The Acrylic. Sunday, Dec. 14; 2 to 5 p.m. 1200 E. Walnut St., Pasadena Tickets are $15 or you can donate 5 or more records at the door. More info here.
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Fire department honored with 'Award of Excellence'
Makenna Sievertson
covers the daily drumbeat of Southern California — events, processes and nuances making it a unique place to call home.
Published December 12, 2025 4:30 PM
The "Award of Excellence Star" honoring the Los Angeles Fire Department on Friday.
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The Hollywood Walk of Fame has a new neighbor — a star dedicated to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Why it matters: The Fire Department has been honored with an “Award of Excellence Star” for its public service during the Palisades and Sunset fires, which burned in the Pacific Palisades and Hollywood Hills neighborhoods of L.A. in January.
Why now: The star was unveiled on Hollywood Boulevard on Friday at a ceremony hosted by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and Hollywood Community Foundation.
Awards of Excellence celebrate organizations for their positive impacts on Hollywood and the entertainment industry, according to organizers. Fewer than 10 have been handed out so far, including to the LA Times, Dodgers and Disneyland.
The backstory: The idea of awarding a star to the Fire Department was prompted by an eighth-grade class essay from Eniola Taiwo, 14, from Connecticut. In an essay on personal heroes, Taiwo called for L.A. firefighters to be recognized. She sent the letter to the Chamber of Commerce.
“This star for first responders will reach the hearts of many first responders and let them know that what they do is recognized and appreciated,” Taiwo’s letter read. “It will also encourage young people like me to be a change in the world.”
LAFD Chief Jaime E. Moore, Eniola Taiwo and LAFD firefighters with the "Award of Excellence Star" Friday.
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The Award of Excellence Star is in front of the Ovation Entertainment Complex next to the Walk of Fame; however, it is separate from the official program.
What officials say: Steve Nissen, president and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement Taiwo’s letter was the inspiration for a monument that will “forever shine in Hollywood.”
“This recognition is not only about honoring the bravery of the Los Angeles Fire Department but also about celebrating the vision of a young student whose words reminded us all of the importance of gratitude and civic pride,” said Nissen, who’s also president and CEO of the Hollywood Community Foundation.
L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto was accused of an ethics breach in a case the city settled for $18 million.
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Topline:
Fallout from allegations of an ethics breach by Los Angeles’ elected city attorney has reached the City Council. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced a motion Friday requesting a closed-session meeting about an allegation that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto improperly contacted a witness days before her office entered into one of the city’s biggest settlements in recent years. The motion came a day after LAist reported about the allegation.
The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.
The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.
What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."
What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."
Topline:
Fallout from allegations of an ethics breach by Los Angeles’ elected city attorney has reached the City Council. Councilmember Ysabel Jurado introduced a motion Friday requesting a closed-session meeting about an allegation that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto improperly contacted a witness days before her office entered into one of the city’s biggest settlements in recent years. The motion came a day after LAist reported about the allegation.
The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.
The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.
What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."
What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."
