From Baywatch to toxic watch

With its rescuers lined with sun, its tanned surfers and its volleyball players dressed in Bikini, Will Rogers State Beach is one of the most recognizable sand sections in the world thanks to the classic world cult “Baywatch”.

But now, the emblematic beach is surrounded by the ruins of burned houses and palm trees, its parking lot for sorting land for dangerous waste of forest fires. The beach girls were replaced by teams from the environmental protection agency in dangerous combinations, the batteries of melted electric cars and other hazardous waste before being transported by truck to discharges.

Eaton palisades and fires have generated an astonishing quantity of debris, estimated at 4.5 million tonnes. In comparison, the 2023 MAUI devastating fires generated around 400,000 tonnes, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers.

These fires have taken three months of cleaning by EPA, which is in charge of the elimination of hazardous waste. But now, the agency hopes to finish its job in Los Angeles in just a month – February 25 – after President Donald Trump signed an executive decree demanding at EPA “accelerating the bulk withdrawal of contaminated and general debris” .

The decision to sort the hazardous waste along the coast caused demonstrations and as the cleaning of fire debris moves to unprecedented speeds, many ask if and when the ocean water will be safe for the swimming and surfing.

“In this very vulnerable place, they sort this very dangerous and dangerous thing,” said actor and ecologist Bonnie Wright. “For me, it looks like 10 steps back, because you literally put this waste even closer to the beach than in burning sites.”

Ms. Wright, who played Ginny in Harry Potter films, wrote a book on sustainability and mostly devotes his time to environmental causes. While their battle to ward off the sorting sites from the coast finally failed, she said that activists have managed to urge EPA to move batteries of burnt electric vehicles on the Will Rogers site at the bottom of the road and Far from the sensitive watershed of the Topanga stream.

The EPA said that burnt vehicle batteries are a particularly dangerous challenge, but that the agency has the expertise to treat them. To sift waste, they need a large space with roads large enough for the circulation of trucks – which is why the Pacific Coast Highway, which runs along the beach, is more attractive than inside the windy roads and mountainous of the palisades.

When the lithium ion batteries are damaged – in particular by high heat and flames of a forest fire – they have the potential for roast and explosion of days, weeks or even months after their impact, said Steve Calanog, the EPA incident commander for the Fire.

“We must treat them as an unploded order, or, as the army calls it uxo,” he said.

Although some questioned the speed at which the EPA moved to clean the toxic debris, he said that there was no time to waste.

“We have to do it very quickly,” he said, noting that they were starting to sort the waste even though the fires were still raging.

“If we are delayed, the risk of having an impact on the ocean, it goes up.”

Mr. Calanog was also in charge of the EPA response to MAUI fires, which may contain clues on how to measure what is safe and reasonable when it comes to testing water and water samples and ground.

Many are concerned with the impacts of heavy metals and chemicals in air and water after fires. In Maui, it has been almost 18 months since the fires and a small part of the coast around Lahaina are still closed to the public. The body of army engineers – which eliminates heavy debris after the EPA has removed hazardous waste – has just finished their last transport in Lahaina on February 20.

But most of Maui remained open to residents and tourists and the Hawaii Ministry of Health announced eight months after the fires that coastal waters around Lahaina were safe for leisure on the ocean.

The extent of cleaning of Los Angeles fires is however unprecedented and the largest in American history.

The county of the has closed its beaches along a section of nine miles (14 km) for weeks after fires in January. Then, the torrential rains – while helping to turn off the flowing embers – caused mud shifts in the burning zone and the runoff of toxic ashes and chemicals in the ocean, causing new closures.

Now, most of the beaches are reopened, but a notice of water remains in force along the coast of Santa Monica in Malibu until the new opinion advised “beach lovers can recreate on the sand, but continue to be advised to stay far from the visible shooting debris and stay away from the ocean water during any stated ocean opinion “.

Only the most dedicated and local surfers could access the beaches of the Burn zone – there is no parking or stop over around 9 miles along the Pacific Coast road, which is clogged with trucks and workers cleaning the debris.

Although some will risk almost anything to catch a good wave.

By visiting the EPA sorting site, Annelisa Moe said that she saw two surfers in the water during a popular surf break on Topanga beach while she was looking at workers on the other side of the Street in full management of burned EV car batteries.

“Water looked like chocolate milk with brown foam,” said Ms. Moe, who is the associate director of science and policies, the quality of water in Heal The Bay, a non -profit organization environmental dedicated to the creation of healthy coastal watersheds.

“It was one of these days, between storms, like a beautiful type of time of 75 degrees,” she said. “And so it was a bit strange to be there in the middle of destruction while we have this perfect beach day.”

Jenny Newman, of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, told the Virtual City Hall of Public Health of the County on February 18 that the first water quality tests they had carried out on January 22-27 “came back better than what we expected.” But the water commission warned that people should follow the county’s opinions to stay outside the water near the burning site.

Dozens of scientists and volunteers from the bay and a myriad of private agencies and the public sector have also tested water and soil samples to see what levels of chemicals forever and heavy metals are present in The ocean, but toxic analysis can take 4-6 weeks and there is very little data available.

At the Surfrider Foundation, the volunteers test the ocean water all year round. But their small laboratory tests feces – not arsenic. Now it is too dangerous to exhibit volunteers in burning areas, so staff have teamed up with Heal The Bay and the University of South California to treat their water samples.

“All the members of our community are ocean lovers. We have the same questions as they have,” Eugenia Ermacora said the Surfrider Foundation. “It’s a concern, and everyone asks, when can we go back? When is it sure? And I would like to have an answer.”

Chad White, a surfer who grew up in the palisades and who protested the EPA sorting site along the Pacific Coast Highway was lost. And there are too much metal and other debris in surfing.

“It took my desire to surf at zero, not only because of the quality of the water, but just because of what is happening,” he said on a Topanga Canyon coffee. He survived his first wave in 1977 at Will Rogers State Beach and taught his son to surf at the age of four and his wife at 60.

“It’s overwhelming someone like me,” he said about destruction along the coast. “This beach also means something for me, and I am a person. There are dozens of hundreds or thousands of us who use the beach every day.”

Many friends of Mr. White have lost their house and he said that people were traumatized to see what the landscape and the place around them look like.

“Each film you see, each film that makes anyone else’s part of the world wants to come to California is based on this view of this Pacific Coast motorway and these beautiful houses in Malibu, through the beach. They all left “He said.” Now it’s a toxic dumping ground. “