LA County planned to send fire debris to the desert. Then the community spoke up

On an early May morning, heavy equipment began scraping a property across the street from Kari Toth’s home in Palmdale, kicking up clouds of dust.

" It was basically enveloping our houses," Toth said. "We're like … there's something wrong here."

The parcel, just about 1,500 feet from the California Aqueduct, is owned by L.A. County. The heavy equipment was from county Public Works, and workers were grading the site, which was covered in native desert scrub.

Kari Toth’s husband, Nicholas, said machinery operators told him that the site was being prepared to store aggregate. Specifically, ground up foundations from the Eaton Fire burn area.

"Oh, hell no," thought Kari Toth when she found out. "That just made it so much worse."

A grader flattens desert land in Palmdale in preparation for concrete aggregate from the Eaton Fire burn area.

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Courtesy Kari Toth

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Yet that was the plan.

Chuck Bostwick, a senior field deputy for L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, explained what happened at a Littlerock Town Council meeting May 8.

"Somebody in L.A. County decided it would be a good thing to save $400,000 on road repair costs by accepting material from the Army Corps of Engineers," Bostwick can be heard saying in an audio recording of the meeting reviewed by LAist. "This material was ground up concrete from concrete slabs from the destroyed houses in Altadena. The Army Corps of Engineers says it’s perfectly safe."

Bostwick then added that he found out what was happening when community members reached out to him.

It might be true that the material is safe, he said, "but there's so much controversy. Nobody's ever going to believe that. So why don't we just not do it?"

And that was the end of that plan.

The politics of fire debris

Barger’s office had no idea about the plan for the concrete, said Anish Saraiya, director of Altadena recovery for the supervisor’s office.

"When we found out about it," he said, "we asked them [Public Works] to immediately put a stop to this idea."

He said that for a plan like that to go forward, the community would need to be educated about the process, told why the material is safe, how much will be stored and how it would be used.

Public Works, meanwhile, said it wasn’t until workers were clearing the Palmdale site that county officials realized the material was coming from the burn zone, said Kerjon Lee, a department spokesperson.

 "In light of concerns about contamination … we won't be taking any material from the burn areas," Lee said.

LAist asked how the deal came to be and how much material they’d planned to accept at the site, but Lee did not respond before publication.

Concrete from the Eaton Fire burn zone that was briefly destined for the Antelope Valley likely would have come from the debris operation at the Altadena Golf Course, seen here in April.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Huge piles of ground up concrete

The revelation about the county’s abandoned plan for the concrete comes amid scrutiny of dumping in the desert. An LAist investigation published this month examined the origin of construction and demolition debris illicitly dumped on remote desert properties last year. Those incidents and others led the state’s waste agency to enact emergency regulations and prompted Antelope Valley residents to file lawsuits.

The material that sparked outrage in Palmdale this month likely came from the Altadena Golf Course (which LAist visited in April), where huge amounts of concrete from the Eaton Fire burn zones are being ground up and turned into smaller chunks of aggregate.

Before it gets to the golf course, the material is supposed to be washed. And while it’s being ground up, water is sprayed to keep dust down.

Controversy has surrounded the processing of fire debris at the Altadena Golf Course, as well as where the material will go.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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There’s been controversy over the material and its safety — both in how it's being processed at the Altadena Golf Course and in the communities where it might end up.

It’s not uncommon for concrete to be ground up and reused for road base. Lee said Public Works planned to use the aggregate to reinforce road shoulders, which are often eroded by severe storms.

LAist reached out to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ask about where ground up concrete is being sent, if they’re having trouble getting rid of the concrete and whether there are other sites in the Antelope Valley or elsewhere in the Mojave Desert being used to store the material. The Army Corps did not return a request for comment before publication.

Potential violations

Even though material never arrived at the Palmdale site, the act of grading could have violated at least three California regulations.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating whether any Joshua trees were removed, according to spokesperson Steve Gonzalez. The trees are protected under the Western Joshua Tree Conservation Act, which requires permits be obtained prior to removal.

The Palmdale site before it was cleared by L.A. County Public Works, as seen in May 2022 in this Google Street View image.

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Google

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A view of the Palmdale site after it was cleared by L.A. County Public Works.

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Kari Toth

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There’s also no record of a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review being filed.

It's likely subject to CEQA "if it’s an activity that’s affecting the environment, involves grading of the land and there’s public agency involvement," said Meredith Stevenson, staff attorney for the urban wildlands program with the Center for Biological Diversity.

And the county did not get a dust control plan from the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District, according to the agency. Public Works is being required to send water trucks to keep the dust down, but it’s still billowing and caking nearby homes every time the wind blows, Kari Toth said.

"They messed it up," she said. "I think they just abandoned it, washed their hands of it and moved on. And they're hoping everybody will just shut up."

"That's not going to change until there's rain or until they fix it."