The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched its most extensive wildfire hazardous waste removal operation to date, responding to the catastrophic wildfires that have devastated Los Angeles County, the agency said on Monday.
The agency noted in a statement that it had already conducted reconnaissance at 6,022 properties, including 3,636 impacted by the Eaton Fire and 2,386 by the Palisades Fire.
“EPA is undertaking the largest wildfire cleanup in the history of the agency,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “We’re not going to wait days or weeks or months to ramp up.
“We have over a thousand personnel on the ground to aid Californians, and our local, state, and federal partners, in Los Angeles’s recovery. The Trump administration is tackling this head on in a way that EPA couldn’t possibly be prouder to be a part of.”…