Twenty years ago, it was called Rodeo Grounds – an eclectic neighborhood of artists, musicians and surfers living in beach shacks where Topanga Canyon meets the Pacific Ocean. In a bizarre agreement with the former owner some paid as little as $100 a month for rent, raising multiple generations of their families here since the 1950s. But that was before the state purchased the property and started evicting residents in 2001. Julie Howell, who once owned Howell-Green Fine Art Gallery further up in the canyon, says the bohemians were kicked out.
“I actually had a show in my gallery 20 years ago for the group of artists who lived there at Rodeo Grounds, who they kicked out of that spot because it was so environmentally sensitive,” says Howell.
Whatever the bulldozers didn’t raze decades ago – including the shuttered Topanga Ranch Motel, a series of bungalow-style rooms originally built in 1929 by the media tycoon William Randolph Hearst and which closed in 2004 – is now decimated due to the Palisades fire that ignited on 7 January.
Left behind is a scorched, flat parcel with a creek in back and the beach across the street. California state parks decided this was the perfect place to allow the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to construct a temporary staging area for household hazardous waste sorting, trucking in products like paints, solvents, bleach and insecticides, as well as EV lithium-ion batteries from destroyed Pacific Palisades properties some 8 miles (13km) away. About three weeks ago a brigade of EPA workers began sorting and bundling the hazardous materials to ultimately be taken en masse to appropriate recycling centers, according to Steve Calanog, EPA deputy incident commander for the Palisades and Eaton fires.
As soon as word got out about plans to use the site, residents in the tightknit community of Topanga Canyon – often affectionately referred to as “hicks and hippies” though the median income and house prices in the canyon also suggests they are well-paid – went into action contacting officials, attending council meetings from Malibu to the Palisades to register their dismay, and protesting when the EPA workers showed up.
Tears have been shed.
“It’s heartbreaking,” says Howell. “Most of us here are environmentalists and we are just wondering how it makes sense to transport hazardous materials down to the water?”
The name Topanga comes from the Indigenous Tongva people and is said to mean “where the mountain meets the sea”. Topanga resident Deb Rivera says she’s upset because Lower Topanga, where the EPA site sits, and Topanga Canyon are important sites of Native American heritage: “Doing this here is disrespectful.” She also points out that Topanga lacks representation. “We are unincorporated LA. We have no mayor; we have no city councilperson fighting for us.” Residents say through their countless meetings they learned the EPA wanted to use the paved parking lot of Will Rogers state beach, which is far closer to Pacific Palisades. Rivera and others believe this plan was nixed because Palisades and nearby Santa Monica had representatives pushing back for them, but EPA’s Calanog says decisions were made entirely for practical purposes and to get the job done quickly.
“At the time we got mobilized, the Palisades fire was less than 50% contained,” Calanog explained. “There were a lot of firefighting personnel still actively fighting the fires and there’s not a lot of flat land of considerable space.” He said firefighters, National Guard, utility trucks and more all needed space –including at Will Rogers. “We were limited in terms of what was available.”
Still, residents begged decision makers to reconsider, arguing that the debris should ideally be sorted in place, miles from the water. The Topanga mom, actor and environmentalist Bonnie Wright, who played Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, has had regular strategy meetups with neighbors at the Topanga library and is collecting signatures on a petition to stop EPA’s use of Topanga. So far, she has some 13,000 signatures. Residents have been most concerned about the EV lithium-ion batteries, which contain toxic metals and are highly flammable.
“This is a public health thing but it’s also about the economy. So many communities around here rely on tourism that the coastline brings. You don’t sort toxic debris at the beach,” says Wright.
Though the activists say EPA staff have been respectful and willing to talk, they have also been unwavering.
Calanog, an EPA veteran who has headed wildfire response for Hawaii and the west coast for the past 15 years, says he empathizes yet is confident in his agency’s safety protocols. “One of the misconceptions with all of this work is that somehow there’s some exotic chemical that’s being brought into the community,” he said. “What we’re pulling out of the homes are things that every homeowner buys for themselves to use in their day-to-day life.”
Calanog says the chemicals are placed in containers upon pickup by one of the 50 teams working in the Palisades. “There are no errant fumes.” At the Lower Topanga worksite, EPA has also taken many precautions, including placing commercial, industrial grade barriers on the unpaved ground, surrounding the site to prevent any potential runoff, and installing air monitors. In addition, the agency soil tested before beginning work and will do so again after completion. The data will be given to the department of public works to release to the public. “In all my years of doing this, we’ve never impacted a property,” Calanog said.
The California state parks spokesperson Jorge Moreno also said Gabrieleño Band of Mission Indians – Kizh Nation and the Gabrielino-Tongva Indian Tribe of California have been involved with the monitoring at the site.
But when last week’s rainstorm loomed, Topanga Canyon activists went from high gear to ultra-high. Residents have a WhatsApp group specifically for air and water quality. Some 500 residents have joined, including Cara Kinkel, who lives in nearby Woodland Hills and whose daughter attends Topanga elementary school. WhatsApp lit up with information and ideas about appealing to officials. “This is an incredibly well-organized community,” says Kinkel. Bonnie Wright took to Instagram and blasted out information to her almost 4m followers.
The hillside behind the creek and the entirety of Topanga Canyon and Pacific Coast Highway is known for its fragile hills. In one epic rain, a 300-tonne boulder rolled down a hill and closed Topanga Canyon boulevard – the one road in and out of the canyon – for more than a week. PCH often has weather-related debris slides. The residents were concerned the EPA site, which is now often referred to as Lower Topanga, could get slammed and hazardous waste would end up in the creek and ocean. Already, ash has been detected 100 miles (161km) off shore and scientists who were onboard a research vessel at the time of the fires have said the water smelled like burned electronics.
On the eve of the storm, residents got heartening news: EPA had packed up the lithium ion battery sorting station and moved it from Lower Topanga to the Will Rogers beach parking lot. Calanog says now that the National Guard and others have moved out, it simply became a better choice. “For the team that is handling the batteries, it was just easier to stage their equipment and their vehicles there.”
For the “hippies and hicks”, though, it’s a mini win. One resident called it a heroic move on the EPA’s behalf. Phase one cleanup will be done by the end of the month and Calanog says Topanga will continue to be used for the rest of the household hazardous waste until then.
But residents now worry that the site will not be closed when the EPA’s work is complete. “There’s still a chance that Topanga could be used for phase two cleanup when the Army Corps of Engineers take over,” says Howell.
Calanog says though no decisions have been made, it’s a possibility. “I would caveat that their work is vitally important and I’m sure that they’re going to explore all areas from which to base their operation so they can do their work just as fast.”
