The Highwire with Del Bigtree - CALABASAS TOXIC DUMPING THREATENS FAMILIES

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

In the wake of the Palisades fire, California officials bypassed critical safety measures, dumping thousands of tons of untested toxic debris into a municipal landfill near Calabasas homes and schools. Local mom and Protect Calabasas co-founder Natasha Downing joins Del to reveal how this reckless “cleanup” endangers children and families.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

There are warriors everywhere. People step up all the time. And I hope you're one of those people. I'm so psyched that so often we hear about the audience and how, you know, active you are. I think we have one of the most engaged audiences out there. You're watching the highway. You care about what's going on. But we were told about a story that I wasn't even paying attention to.

Sure, we see about the fires and, you know, all the people and the insurance scandals are going on and people losing their homes. But I will tell you, one of the most toxic things you can ever do, is go and visit your burned out home, which I had to do after the fires that were in Malibu. Think of all of the disease that came from those people that worked in 9-11 on the towers there, just on that smoldering pile of all of the metals and the computers, and it's burning aluminum. I mean, it's really horrific asbestos. Now think of California and all of the batteries and the cars.

I mean, they're like the electric car capital of the world. All of those things are burned. Where do you think they go? I mean, they're not launching them. Elon Musk isn't launching them in space. Where is it going? Imagine if it was going, you know, into a landfill right next to your school or right next to your home. That is the issue that's at the heart of what's going on right now.

Take a look at this. More pushback over fire waste drop off site. Dozens of people gathered over the weekend to protest and block incoming trucks. Neighbors and Calabasasas are demanding. Crews stop dropping off hazardous waste from the devastating, Callasades fire. Thursday's protest happening two days after the LA County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to increase the amount of fire debris allowed in landfills. Calabasasas says no way. Calabasasas says no way.

Protests included TV star and Calabasasas resident Courtney Kardashian. There's no place for these toxic chemicals in a city where there are children, parks, schools. Officials insist that hazardous materials are being handled safely, but residents. and some local leaders remain concerned about potential health risks. People in Calabasas and Agora Hills both say that they feel really left in the dark about this. Even the Calabasasas mayor. We need to know that that material is not going to get into the water and poison our water supplies. No one wants to subject themselves to cancers, to respiratory disease, to all sorts of things like you happen to you and your family.

We should be dumping this in an area that is allowed to take hazardous material. I don't want to sit here and put this in anyone's backyard. This needs to go to a landfill that is deemed hazardous. It's my honor and pleasure to be joined right now by Natasha Downing, who's one of the mothers at the center of this controversy. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. This is something that people don't think about. And, you know, I've had a house burned down.

You have to wear masks. That probably doesn't even really do it. But Calabasas, you know, you think about, well, it all happened in Palisades. Alabasas is like up and over the hill like way out of the way and so this fire that happened in one part of the city is really coming to your neighborhood Yeah, it's seriously affecting us the trucking route that they're using to bring it to us go straight past three of our schools Middle school a preschool and a special education school So and that's that's hundreds and hundreds of trucks a day so we're also getting on the route to the Cemi Valley landfill So we're getting at least 10,000 truck loads, 10,000 tons of trucks coming on our roads past our schools every single day.

We take 5,000 tons a day of debris in our landfill. Now, that landfill is within a one-mile radius of six different schools and over 2,000 homes. There is a playground 100 yards from this landfill. It's horrible. My home is 0.3 miles away. Wow. Yeah. And are all these trees?

Are they always the closed-up garbage trucks? Or are they ever like the open ones with like the sheet over them? They're all the open one with the sheet over them. Really? Yes. So literally just air and wind is just blowing through this and blowing through your neighborhoods. They have a system that they call burrito wrapping, so they wet it down and they put it in this plastic wrapping. Right.

But we've now had it fall out of the trucks and onto our streets at least twice now. And we've also seen video footage of it being done. it being dumped and it goes airborne. And especially now in the summer months, they're wetting it while they're dumping it, but it's not five minutes to Calabasas, so it's 90 degrees out. This starts to dry and I'm not a scientist, but I believe it's windy as all heck. Calabasasas, I mean, you get those Santa Ana Wins whipping down through there. This stuff is going to be everywhere. And so, you know, I obviously speak from some knowledge having been in California. Let me ask you this.

I know it's like anything else. There are some landfills that are designed for toxic waste to be dumped into them. What is the sort of standard that's set for the where this landfill is that's near you? So a class one landfill is supposed to have a liner that has a certain half-life. So it lasts for X amount of years. Ours is a class three landfill and it has a liner, but it's not for a very long time. I actually don't know specifically how long. but it's supposed to take only municipal solid waste.

So that is household trash. Did they have to change any rules or anything really to sort of bring all this stuff in? So what is remarkable is California has some of the strictest environmental regulations in the country. But when Gavin Newsom used his state of emergency, they bypassed all of them. So usually what happens when a fire like this happens is the debris needs to be tested before going to any landfill. designating where it's supposed to go. So what's happened is the testing has been bypassed. So it's not being tested.

It's tested only for asbestos, and that goes to class one. But anything else, it comes straight to us. So the city of Calabasas actually sued the county of Los Angeles over this. And the biggest issue now is they need proof that it's toxic, and the county is blocking testing. Wow. So, I mean, again, it's so tiresome in Gavin Newsom that screams about environment. as you're saying, California holds itself on this level of just being so environmental. They're so worried about global warming and climate change.

And I'll say to you, in all honesty, thinking about the situation as you're describing it, that liner is, by the time that liner dissolves, all the damage will have been done. It really is this stuff floating in your air. And it really is. Winds up there, it's crazy, why these fires get so far out of control. And you're right, it's hot, it's drying. There's no way they're controlling for that. There's no way to keep that pollution down. Point three miles you are away from this landfill. I'm so sorry to hear that. We actually sent a crew out to sort of

hang out a little bit with you and some of the other mothers and people that are really fighting this. Let's just take a look at some of the things we saw behind the scenes. Protect Calabasasas started because a number of different residents were incensed about what was happening. There was a city council meeting in Calabasas where our city council discuss what was going on and a few of us who are all there joined together to start this fight. I would say there's at least 200 trucks a day coming through here every single day. So this is Les Virginus Road and it's also like the school that my son goes to is sandwiched in between these two roads. So he crosses right at this school crosswalk and then at any given time there'll be like a stack of dump trucks on either side waiting to go through and then these

kids are just crossing it. I think they've chosen Calabasasas because it's close. And this is what we heard them say. It's convenience. They want the cleanup to be done quickly as it should be. But the issue is they're not testing it and they're bringing toxic things to people's homes. And it's being trucked in a manner that is not totally safe. We're at the top of the trail across the street from residents where I live. This is the Calabasas landfill. We got one, two, three, four trucks, fifth one coming to the left now we're getting busy how far do you think those homes are to hear in a straight line that has got to be maybe a mile this is what the

governor allowed this is what the mayor allowed this is what our county supervisor district three allowed if you live in a city where you cannot even smoke cigarettes or anything in public space and waste management drives around for a a greener tomorrow. How would this make you feel? It infuriates me. If you look at that sign, those are all the fees, the dumping fees. And you can see they expanded the amount of debris that can be dumped here to 5,000 tons a day. It used to be 3,800 and they average like 800 before all this. Now it's up to 5,000 tons a day. I think it's $95 a ton. I believe it's it's FEMA paying the county. I did a public

records request to try to see I wanted to get like the cash stream from when the sanitation district gets paid by all these guys and then how much do they actually pay the county but they sent me some like ridiculous checks that were for not very much they didn't send me the full thing that I asked for but if they're charging ninety five dollars a ton that's like a couple million dollars a week just here now we're dealing with toxic hazardous debris everybody has an evi Far burns down in the palisades. It's here. How many TVs is in one household?

There's a TV in the kitchen. There's a TV in the bathroom. There's a TV in the kids' room. The primary bedroom. That's there now. In the beginning, we made a lot of noise. Stay palis! We protested at least 20 times.

We were all over the local news. We were in the LA Times. We made TMZ. There's no place for these toxic chemicals where there are children, parks, schools, Protect Calabasasas has been working with UCLA to get testing. So we've been collecting soil samples and water samples, and those are being tested as we speak.

Calabasas, Las Virginis Unified, have been pretty powerless against the county and FEMA and just getting anything done, getting any response. I send an email every single day to like five different representatives, Lindsay Horvath, like every single day it sends the same email. They just don't, they don't care. in this state. Like I have complaints about a lot of things, like the homeless problem, the illegal migration and giving away money. Those things you're never going to get them to address, but I was

like an environmental thing, that's like in their wheelhouse. That's what they care about. You don't think about landfills until you have to think about landfills. And then one day this stuff starts happening where the government just turns on you. You shouldn't have to fight for your children's health. You just shouldn't. You shouldn't have to wake up and worry every day, whether staying in your home means that your children will get cancer. Yeah, definitely things that we shouldn't have to be worrying about. I'm joined now, joining us in this conversation is Steve Slepsivik from Strategic Response Partners, one of our good friends of the show.

Good to see you, Dale. Steve, thanks for joining us today. Good to see you. You deal with toxic sites like this all the time. One of the biggest jobs you do is where there's fire, you know, strategic response partners will be there. what type of toxins. I mean, you have to worry about your own safety, your own health, the health of your employees. So when we're talking about toxins that are in these environments, what are those toxins

and what's needed to make it safe to deal with them? So on these wildfire sites, there's always a pre, like when you're testing as to what's in the debris. And even that's subjective. So you could actually strategically pull samples where you know there's no roof mastic, where you know there's no joint compound, where the areas where you're, there's no asbestos. So even that could be skewed as to as a contractor you could pull certain samples with your environmental consultant. It's the fox watch and the hen house when these

people working together. So with the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA and them doing their first phase and second phase, they can say this site is there's no asbestos in it and we could take it to that landfill. Okay. The issue is that there was a lot of people also pulling and pushing and putting stuff in trash bags and saying that it's just yard waste. Sure. And so a lot of this stuff is, in that landfill because I witnessed it as people doing it the incorrect way. Right. The interesting thing is that after 20 years of doing a specific way that was regulated, you have to, once the lot was cleared, you also had to do post-testing, which we call exit or a

clearance test. Yeah. And they just decided that they weren't going to go. And they weren't going to do it. They were just going to eliminate it. Gavin Newson, the government decided that we're not going to do any post-clearance. We just find that if we cut six inches, it's going to be clean. But in the campfire and the Woolsey fire was required, 30% of those lots failed.

Exit testing. Wow. Wolsey fire, which you helped me with. I mean, my house, I lost my house in the Woolsey Fire in Malibu. My wife and I and our kids. It was scary, and you're right. I mean, those things are just, and they kind of smolder for days. And then you're just like, what is all of that?

And then we had heavy rains shortly after before the lots were clear. So this stuff leached into the water tables, leached into the soil. So cutting six inches is not fixing the issue. Right. In Hawaii, after the wildfires in Hawaii, even Dr. Payne, the Department of Health, clearly said, hey, my daughter's thinking of having children. I'm not having her come to this side of the island for the next seven years. Right.

These new fuels that are burning all these cadium, all these new synthetic fuels burning at this fire, we don't even know what those toxins are that we can't even identify. We don't have tests to test those dioxins. We're not just talking about what we know now. Right. Even when you talk about glyphosate, then 20 years later, we find that the impact. 9-11, New York, ground zero, 15, 20 years, and an act of Congress to finally pay for the lung and respiratory issues that were there.

So the environmental impact on birth defects, childhood cancers, leukemias, there's a short study that was done by the Lancet that's public. out there. You can find it. There's an article written what lies beneath when the smoke clears. The Lancet published the report on a short term that shows there was a 20% increase in excess deaths within a 25 mile radius of the wildfires because it's not a brush fire. It's actually considered an industrial fire. Do you know it's different from trees burning versus synthetic and I would say, you know, and you know, you started a group protect calabasasas. Yeah. Tell me what the goal of that is.

What is the thinking behind it? The goal of Protect Calabasas is to stop the dumping. And we have tried to exercise kind of every avenue that we can think of to have that happen. So media, legal, we had a lawsuit. We were not able to raise money as quickly as we wanted to, so we had to drop our lawsuit. But the city has their lawsuit. So we're supporting them in any way we can. Testing, community outreach.

So that's the point of Protect Calabasas. to somehow get this dumping stopped and political pressure. As Melissa said in that video, we write to these politicians as much as we can. She writes every single day and just continuing to put political pressure until hopefully someone listens, someone steps in, because it's a travesty. The fact that we put convenience and money

before human health, that should never happen. I mean, when I think about this thing, I mean, honestly, Pacific Policades, I think you might be able to make the argument that this is the largest electric car fire that's ever happened. Yeah. You know what I mean? We are talking every one of those people, I know them, are driving Tesla's, hybrids, electric cars, the most expensive ones there are. You even saw in that shot, I would say four out of every five cars was some giant battery that has smoldered. And to your point,

we find out, you know, 20 years later how bad Glevis it is. We find out how many years later was at 9-11. 9-11 was not a pile of Teslas. This is a pile of it. Not to out Tesla, electric cars. Like, I'm not trying to get Elon Musk in any trouble here, but we have no idea what these things are. We know that they're bad already just being out in some landfill. What happens about a burned one? The shell of it is melted. All of the contents in it, you know, Steve. And why would they ever be shipping this inside of a neighborhood? I mean, just over the hill you have the Mahat, you know, the desert is out there. They can't buying a landfill, you know, 100 miles from humanity? It's money.

If you look at the price of how they increase the price substantially per ton of dropping it at that landfill, the county owns it. So they increased it? Oh, yeah, by 70%. Wow. So even the cotton, they're making a killing, literally. And the county's making it. So you're saying the county's the one making the money. The county owns the landfill.

So the city's screwed, and you've got your own, you know, head of the city's on your side saying, we want to see this stuff study. The city council vote unanimously to, to, not allow the dumping or at least and to have it tested. But they've tried to get a tested now for months and the county is blocking the testing. I've heard that that might be shifting. Did the judge rule on this at all? There was a hearing on last Friday, June 13th, and he said they have 20 days to either come to a settlement.

And if there is no settlement, then the city of Calabasasas can test the debris. But now we've had some independent testing, but there's no chain of custody. It's me and Melissa going in. But we've tested a lot in the Palisades that was cleared of stage one and not of stage two. So that's what we're getting. And we know that it is high in lead. High and lead. And that's the only thing that we've gotten so far, so it could be high in a plethora of other things.

But we have our lead results because that's the fastest test for heavy metals. What is a journey? You've seen some of these things as they go down the road. You know, I think we're all just getting sick to our stomachs with governments that have some form of liability protection around everything they do. But let's say the city finally gets to the place and they start testing. I mean, you can't undo the damage you've done. And my team was there.

They said literally hundreds of trucks all day. Like it is non-stop. This isn't like a couple of trucks. This is just a jam-packed bumper-to-bumper, freeway of toxic waste in essentially like open railroad cars that are just blowing through. You know, what happens if the city starts? testing this stuff and saying, oh my God, Houston, we have a problem. What happens if four or five years down the road, we start hearing studies, like you've said, within 25 miles of this dump,

we're seeing a rise in childhood cancers. And, you know, is that a class action laws? Does it end of being lawsuits against the county? Do they have protections? Where is this going to end up? The studies are already there showing even on a short-term study. They've done over 700 locations in 43 countries, Brazil, Australia, and they show 20 percent. excess debts directly correlated to those burn zones. So what she's doing with her team is incredible. This is how you do it. Mom stand up and I always say, where the father's at?

They need to be on the front row of that thing and really hammering on those cities, pushing that stuff through. Her city is doing a good job. Here's what really troubles me. When they say they want to, if they settle it, then it goes away. That's a great payoff. But wait a minute, you're now talking about paying off that you're basically indemnified the people that come up with these other health issues later.

Yeah. So the question is, say we get to the testing. Great. An environmental assessment and city, when you're bringing your environmental against the county, I'll bring some great CIS and we'll bore right in that same area. We'll pull the samples from the ground in the same locations. You send it to your labs. We'll send it to our independent labs.

And we'll pay for it ourselves. Yeah. Right? because I can't be bought. Right? I don't, to me, this is my world. It's about our children. It's about the future and that this type of stuff doesn't happen.

But you can send it to your lab. I'll send it to my lab. It should come out the exact same. And when the site is being assessed as to where you're going to pull it, again, no, no, no, you're going to three feet over because that's the highest probable issue that there's going to be some contaminants in that area that got mixed in. So this is big. Yeah, it's big. It's really big, and it deserves to take a look at it. When we talk about the health of America, right?

And the environmental toxins in food, in vaccines, and all this other stuff that we're starting to pay attention to. Well, this is the elephant in the room. And if it's that, what other parts of your neighborhood or your area? Maybe from the floodwaters after a hurricane. It may be from a chemical plant down the street. Those are all areas that need to be properly looked at. But what they did was they just rushed it.

They knew what the issue was, but it was all money driven. So it's profits before people. It is. And the sooner that somebody gets in there does a proper testing of it, it becomes a superfund site. And the millions of the county collected, that exposure. Yeah. Now they're like, oh, we should have thought about it. We shouldn't have put money.

Now we're going to have to deal with this thing. And possibly then remove that landfill and move it to the desert. But then it'll be done through a proper remediation. now it's going to be under a microscope. Are you sort of hoping that there isn't a settlement or is this,

what's the position of people in the city? I mean, what does a settlement mean? Enough money that we could move it ourselves? What is that? What does a settlement even mean in these situations?

It's a great question. I don't know the answer to that. I can't even imagine what the argument is for not testing the debris, but a set. Right. What settlement would,

I would be happy if they stopped dumping it and moved it in the world of safe? If you do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, will allow you to keep your hands. heads in the sand and la, nothing to see here. I mean, isn't it a crazy world? Like, no testing allowed?

I mean, how crazy is that? What, what is this? Do I live in North Korea? You know, what is happening? And that's what legally supposed to happen. They've used some loophole so they don't have to do it. It's wild. How is this affecting, I mean, this isn't a political show,

but watching Gavin Newsome, what are the conversations amongst your friends and things about leadership right now in California? It just seems like everything you could do wrong, you are doing wrong. Yeah. And to have this happen on a platform that you stand on, right? California is all about environmentalism, but you're poisoning your own people by choice. This is wild.

So, I mean, politically, I was a lifelong Democrat. And then I moved to California. It kind of squeezes it out of you. I was a lifelong Democrat, too. And it's wild when you live in the Democratic utopia. I live in California, and I was a Democrat. Right, right. It's something about being the Democratic utopia.

You know, you mean the Republic of California and, you know, people's, you know, crazy. So what I wanted to add. He's, Gavin Newsom's asked for $40 billion. Okay. You know that recently. I don't know if you saw that. No, I didn't see that. And that was approached by Trump.

And I'm watching this comedy show. I'm like, wait a minute. Gavin Newson's asking for $40 billion for wildfire victims. That's $3 million per house that burned down. Wait a minute. You can't even build a railway. Right. Do you mean?

You've spent billions. But yet you're asking for that, it's not going to the people. By the time the NGOs, the management companies, everything else, it's waste, fraud and abuse. Yeah. So to me, I always go, when are the people of California going to wake up and change leadership? Yeah. From the disaster of how they responded to the fires, from Gavin Newsom to Mayor Bass to the fire. Right? And the same thing with the protests. Same thing. Like you're waiting, you know what's going to happen, and you're not moving on it.

Right. But you want to point fingers. Well, to wrap it all up, you've started a group. Is there a way that we can track what you're doing? Maybe even, you know, donate or get involved? Yeah, we have social media to protect Calabasas. Okay. And we have a website, protectcalabasus.org, which has our whole mailing list on there. So for us, what would be hugely helpful is any kind of political pressure. Okay. So if anyone wants to write, write, call, put pressure on these politicians to stand up and say something. So many have just been silent. That would be remarkably helpful. And follow us on social media. It's protect Calbasis. Okay, wonderful, Natasha. Thank you for standing up being a warrior mom. You guys are always the ones that get it done. Steve, once again, thank you for all the great information. You guys should probably get together. This guy's the man.