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Calabasas loses court case to stop LA County from sending fire debris to its landfill
Residents protest sending fire debris to the Calabasas landfill in 2025.
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Judge rules against Calabasas in landfill fire debris lawsuit
The city had sued almost a year ago to keep waste from the Palisades Fire cleanup out of its landfill. This week, it lost.
Topline:
Calabasas sued L.A. County in February 2025 in an attempt to stop the trucking of Palisades Fire debris to the city's landfill, citing concerns about hazardous materials. This week, an L.A. County Superior Court judge denied the city's petition, writing that the county followed appropriate processes.
The Calabasas case: The landfill, owned by L.A. County, is a Class III site, which isn't permitted to accept hazardous materials. Calabasas argued that those could be present in fire debris. So the city ran multiple soil tests — on four trucks and one damaged property — and found elevated levels of copper and zinc in two of the samples. But the tests were unable to establish that hazardous waste meant to be kept out of the landfill was being dumped there. Further, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, wildfire ash can be excluded from being classified as hazardous waste.
The court's response: The judge wrote that proper remediation and inspection processes were followed and that the multiphase clearing of properties — which included the removal of waste including lithium batteries and asbestos — and visual inspections of materials dumped at the landfill satisfied the necessary requirements. The city seemed to want more comprehensive testing of material, but the judge wrote that the court couldn’t force a different testing process.
Moving forward: The debris clearing process is all but over, so the likelihood of more material arriving from burned sites is low.
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