R.Years ago, it was called Rodeo Grouments – a selective neighborhood for artists, musicians and skiers living in beach huts where Topanga Canyon meets with the Pacific Ocean. In a strange agreement with the former owner, some paid less than $ 100 per month for rent, raising multiple generations of their families here since the fifties. But that was before the state bought the property and began to evacuate the population in 2001. Jolie Hawj, who once owned the Hadel-Jarin exhibition of fine arts in the valley, says that the Bohemians were expelled.
“I had a show at my exhibition 20 years ago for a group of artists who lived there in Rodeo Grouments, who were expelled from this place because it was a sensitive to the environment.”
Whatever the bulldozers have not been destroyed for decades-including Motel Topanga Ranch Motel, a series of rooms in the style of bang was already built in 1929 by media man William Randolph Hurst, which was closed in 2004-now hinting because of the Palisades fire that caught in January 7.
The left behind it is flat, burned parcels with a creek in the back and the beach across the street. California State Gardens decided that this is the ideal place to allow the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to build a temporary regulatory area for hazardous household waste, truck transport in products such as paints, solvents, whitening and pesticides, as well After about 8 miles (13 km). About three weeks ago, a brigade from the Environmental Protection Agency began sorting and assembling dangerous materials to finally take the appropriate recycling centers, according to Steve Kallanouj, Deputy Commander of the Environmental Protection Agency for Palisades and Eaton.
Once Word has gone out of plans to use the site, residents in the narrow Topanga Canyon community – often referred to as “Hicks and Hippies” although the average income and home prices in the valley also suggest that they are good wages – went to work to contact officials, And attend the council’s meetings from Malibu to Palisades to register their dissatisfaction, and to protest when he attended Environmental Protection Agency workers.
Tears were thrown.
“It is a trauma,” says Huil. “Most of us are the advocates of environmental protection, and we only wonder how it makes sense to transfer dangerous materials to water?”
The name Topanga comes from the original people of Tongva and is said to mean “where the mountain meets the sea.” Deep Rivera, who is in Topanga, says it is upset because Lower Topanga, where EPA sits, and Topanga Canyon is important sites for the heritage of indigenous Americans: “Do this here is not respected.” It also indicates that Toubanga lacks acting. “We are not integrated Los Angeles. We do not have a mayor. We do not have the city council fighting for us.” The residents say through their countless meetings that they learned that the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to use the parking lot of car parks from Will Rogers State Beach, which is closer With a lot of Pacific Palisades. Rivera and others believe that this plan was hacked because Palisades and Santa Monica were close to them, but Calanog from the Environmental Protection Agency says the decisions were taken entirely for practical purposes and quickly accomplished the task.
“At that time we mobilized, the Palisades fire was less than 50 % content,” Calanog explained. “There were many firefighting personnel who were still fighting fire and there is no large flat land.” He said that firefighters, the National Guard, utilities trucks and more space you need everything you need – including Will Rogers. “We were limited in terms of what was available.”
However, the population begged the decision makers to reconsider, on the pretext that the debris should be perfectly sorted in place, miles away from the water. My mother Tubanga, an environmental actress and actress Bonnie Wright, who played Jenny Wizley in Harry Potter’s films, had regular strategic meetings with neighbors in the Topanga Library, and she collects signatures in a petition to stop the UPA use of Tobanga. To date, it has about 13,000 signatures. The population was more worried about the Li -Ev batteries, which contain toxic and very flammable minerals.
This is a general healthy thing, but it is also related to the economy. Many societies here depend on the tourism that the coast brings. “You do not send poisonous debris on the beach,” says Wright.
Although activists say that the environmental protection agency staff were respected and ready to talk, they were also fixed.
Calanog, an old warrior at the Environmental Protection Agency, who has headed the Hoya’s response in Hawaii and the West Coast over the past fifteen years, says he sympathizes with safety protocols in his agency. He said: “One of the misconceptions with all this work is that there is in one way or another some strange chemicals that are brought to society.” “What we take out of the homes is the things that every home owner buys for themselves to use in their daily lives.”
Calanog says that chemicals are placed in containers when captured by one of the fifty -working difference in Palisades. “There are no wrong fumes.” In Lower Topanga Workite, the Environmental Protection Agency has also taken many precautions, including the placing of commercial and industrial barriers on the unpaved floor, surrounding the site to prevent any possible surface flow, and installing air screens. In addition, the soil tested before starting work and will do so again after completion. Data will be granted to the Ministry of Public Works for issuance to the public. “In all my years of doing this, we were never affected by property,” said Kalag.
California spokesman Parks Jorge Moreno said Gabrielino from the Indians-Kisy nation and the Indian Gabrielino Tongvva tribe in California participated in the site.
But when the rainy storm waved on the horizon last week, Topanga Canyon activists moved from high to the high. Residents have the WhatsApp collection specifically for air and water quality. About 500 residents, including Kara Kinkkel, who lives in the nearby Woodland Hills and whose daughter is attending Topanga Elementary School. WhatsApp lighting information and ideas about attracting officials. “This is an incredibly well -organized society,” says Kinkkel. Wright moved to Instagram and information exploded to nearly 4 million of her followers.
The back hill is famous behind the creek and completed the Topanga Canyon road and the Pacific Coast Road with its fragile hills. In one of the epic rain, a rock of 300 tons rolled down a hill and closed Topanga Canyon Street-one road inside and outside the valley-for more than a week. PCH often has the slices of weather associated with the weather. The population was concerned that the EPA website, which is now referred to as the lower Topanga, could end quietly, and ends the dangerous waste in the creek and the ocean. Indeed, ashes were discovered 100 miles off the beach, and scientists who were on a search ship at the time of fires have said that the smell of burned electronics.
On the eve of the storm, the residents obtained encouraging news: The Environmental Protection Agency has mobilized the Li -Ion battery sorting station and transported it from the lower Topanga to the parking lot of Will Rogers Beach. Calanog now says that the National Guard and others have come out, simply a better choice. “For the team that deals with batteries, it was easier to organize their equipment and cars there.”
For “Hippies and Hicks”, it is a small victory. A resident described it as a heroic step on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency. The first stage will be cleaned by the end of the month and Calanog says that Topanga will continue to use it for the rest of the dangerous home waste until then.
But the residents are now concerned that the site will not be closed when the Environmental Protection Agency work is complete. “There is still an opportunity to use Topanga in the second phase of cleaning when the army engineer is taking over,” says Hawul.
Kalanouj says although decisions are not made, it is a possibility. “I would like to warn that their work is very important and I am sure that they will explore all the areas through which their operations must be built so that they can do their job at the same speed.”