The Lineage fire sent toxic runoff down the LA River. Why didn’t Long Beach close its beaches?

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

At the peak of efforts to quell a massive warehouse fire in Boyle Heights in June, firefighters sent 12,000 gallons of water per minute at the flames — by water cannons, aerial ladder pipes and helicopter flybys.

The overwhelming rush of water, millions of gallons over the eight days to subdue the fire, filtered through the Lineage cold-storage facility’s solar panels, insulation and freezers before feeding into nearby storm drains, carrying with it an array of toxic metals, chemicals and tainted food that eventually flowed into the Los Angeles River.

If this were an oil spill, sewage leak or a chemical tank explosion, a standardized system would kick in to notify downstream cities and residents that a dangerous flow is heading their way.

But in this case, that didn’t happen, as experts say a gap in environmental rules made it so the hazardous firefighting runoff skirted the threshold for such a response.

Water is dropped by helicopter at a warehouse fire in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 17, 2026.

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Jae C. Hong

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AP Photo

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According to records reviewed by the Long Beach Post, the city didn’t receive outside warning that its waterways might be unsafe until June 25, eight days after the fire began, when a county public works employee sent a brief email saying fish had begun dying in the nearby wetlands, and that it might be tied to the fire.

“We wanted to alert the City, as your beaches are located at the receiving end of the L.A. River, and wanted to share this information to keep you informed of the situation to ensure that public health and safety are protected,” the email stated.

Even then, that warning never made it to the public. Two months later, Long Beach residents have never been told exactly what chemicals and metals may have been sent downstream and what, if any, harm could have come from swimming, wading and boating in the public waterways that connect to the river. Emergency declarations made by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom days earlier addressed only the toxins sent into the air.

When it comes to firefighting runoff, “there are no mandated protocols” for warning downstream neighbors of the risk, according to Elizabeth Vazquez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Public Works department that manages the L.A. River.

Long Beach’s only public notice came as a city health advisory after routine testing on June 23 discovered high bacteria levels in the ocean. Officials posted warning notices about the bacteria, total coliform, fecal coliform and enterococcus on five segments of beach from Fifth Place to the west side of the Belmont Pier.

Bacteria levels were so high that they reached the peak of what could be registered, said Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas, a community scientist and member of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, an ecological watchdog group. “We don’t really even know the full extent of the bacteria in the water, but what we do know is that it’s at least thirty times higher than normal levels,” he added.

Emmanuel Carrera Ruedas wears a mask and gloves as he prepares to collect water samples from the LA River on Wednesday, July 1.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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A health department spokesperson said last week that no beaches or waterways were closed, even though bacteria levels were high enough to make someone sick. This is standard practice, the department says, as closures are typically reserved for when there is known or suspected sewage or chemical discharge.

The extremely poor water quality was odd for this time of year, according to Heal the Bay, which tracks water quality and indicated it’s normally much better in July. Despite the anomaly, the city’s notices did not mention any potential connection to the fire or any other pollutants it may have sent into the ocean, as the link to the fire has not been confirmed. The city health department tests only for bacteria; it does not routinely test for chemicals, heavy metals or viruses.

Researchers at UCLA and Columbia University, as well as the city of LA’s Bureau of Sanitation, are still testing to determine what hazardous chemicals were in the water and to what extent the runoff carried toxins to the coast. Teams say they screened for 14 metals like cadmium and lead, along with metalloids like arsenic and selenium.

Frustrated by the weak outside warning and the city health department’s limited response, Long Beach City Council members argue there should have been better notice to the thousands of people fishing, boating and swimming in the lower estuaries.

“When water quality is in doubt, families avoid the water, people stop fishing, visitors stay away and local businesses suffer,” according to a July 21 letter from the City Council. “Even perceived risks can limit shoreline use. Protecting our water quality is a regional equity issue, as downstream pollution threatens access to one of the most accessible coastal resources for Southeast Los Angeles communities.”

The Long Beach City Council is now demanding that regional, state and county agencies rethink how they warn each other in the event that dangerous runoff is heading their way.

Councilmember Kristina Duggan, who has championed the idea alongside council members Tunua Thrash-Ntuk and Cindy Allen, argued the problem isn’t some individual or department failing to give notice, but a regulatory blind spot that needs systemic change.

Typically, when a major sewage spill or crude oil slips into the river or sea, a strict, standardized chain of alerts sound off, starting through the California Office of Emergency Services that can trigger beach closures and rapid water testing.

But there is no automatic mechanism that forces agencies to respond the same way for firefighting runoff once it leaves the scene. In fact, it is conditionally exempt from federal and state storm sewer rules.

Instead, departments rely on an informal patchwork of inter-agency courtesy calls; there is no single standardized system dictating who calls whom, how fast or under what threshold.

Without a system in place, scores of dead fish were found in the Dominguez Gap Wetlands before any agency publicly acknowledged the runoff might endanger the water, right before one of the city’s busiest beach weekends of the year.

“Without timely information, our public health professionals cannot make decisions about risks to our residents and our recreational water risks,” Duggan said.

It’s an oversight that’s had consequences before.

In 2021, water used to douse a warehouse fire in Carson sent packaged hand sanitizer into the Dominguez Channel, killing marine life, mystifying residents with a smell of rotten eggs and prompting a proposed $17 million state penalty against property owners. During the 2025 Palisades fires, rain sent toxic ash runoff — containing pesticides, asbestos, plastics and lead from burned cars, electronics, batteries and building materials — into local waters.

In some instances, such as during a January 2025 power plant fire in Moss Landing and another instance at the Port of Los Angeles in September 2024, firefighters thought it environmentally safer to let fires scorch through deposits of lithium-ion batteries rather than douse them and send hazardous runoff into storm drains.

Environmental advocates say these incidents fit a recurring pattern along the concretized Los Angeles River, which lacks natural floodplains and wetlands to filter urban runoff.

Firefighters continue to work on a warehouse fire in Boyle Heights on Sunday, June 21, 2026.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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“What is clear is that our infrastructure and our drainage systems do not consider the LA River to be part of our ecology,” Ruedas said. “There’s no filtration, no efforts to contain any of the metals or any of the bacteria that’s happening at our drainage. It’s a straight shot from wherever the fire is straight into the city of Long Beach. And we saw that very clearly.”

Some groups, including East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, have resorted to self-testing the water out of a growing skepticism for official oversight.

Ruedas said their testing last month along the L.A. River near Long Beach has come back, and they hope to present it to the public in the next week or so. Unable to give too much information, Ruedas said they did notice in their data collection there were heavy spikes in the presence of metals along the river from June 20 to 22.

Ruedas says the region desperately needs to fix how it responds and how it communicates to the public when and where hazardous materials are present.

That requires not just fixing a broken warning system but looking years into the future, he said: “How do we want our drainage systems to look? How do we want to limit not just isolated fire events, but just the entire way we think about water in the city of LA and the county of LA.”

Long Beach is now discussing updated notification protocols with Orange County and Los Angeles County.

“When any event that significantly impacts our water quality and puts the public at risk, it should trigger notification, protocol monitoring and coordination,” Councilmember Duggan said.

The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board is set to take up the topic next month, in a presentation that will review sampling taken along the river and an update on the facility cleanup. Those interested in watching the meeting or reviewing its agenda can click here.