Science
Humans Are Altering the Seas. Here’s What the Future Ocean Might Look Like.
Working from a dock on St. Helena Island, S.C., on a sweltering day this summer, Ed Atkins pulled in a five-foot cast net from the water and dumped out a few glossy white shrimp from the salt marsh.
Mr. Atkins, a Gullah Geechee fisherman, sells live bait to anglers in a shop his parents opened in 1957. “When they passed, they made sure I tapped into it and keep it going,” he said. “I’ve been doing it myself now for 40 years.”
These marshes, which underpin Mr. Atkins’s way of life, are where the line between land and sea blurs. They provide a crucial nursery habitat for many marine species, including commercial and recreational fisheries.
But these vast, seemingly timeless seascapes have become some of the world’s most vulnerable marine habitats, according to a new study published on Thursday in the journal Science that adds up and maps the ways human activity is profoundly reshaping oceans and coastlines around the world.
Soon, many of Earth’s marine ecosystems could be fundamentally and forever altered if pressures like climate change, overfishing, ocean acidification and coastal development continue unabated, according to the authors.
It’s “death by a thousand cuts,” said Ben Halpern, a marine biologist and ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the authors of the new study. “It’s going to be a less rich community of species. And it may not be something we recognize.”
Among the other ecosystems at high risk are sea grass meadows, rocky intertidal zones and mangrove forests. These parts of the ocean, near shore, are the ones people most depend on. They provide natural defenses against storm damage. And the vast majority of commercial and recreational fishing, which together support more than two million jobs in the United States alone, takes place in shallower coastal waters.
There’s also an intangible cultural richness at stake. The culture of Gullah Geechee people like Mr. Atkins, a community descended from enslaved West Africans forced to work the rice and cotton plantations of the Southeastern coast, for example, is inextricably linked to fishing and the seashore.
“We have our own language, we have our own food ways, we have our own ecological system here,” said Marquetta Goodwine, the elected head of the Gullah Geechee people and a leader in efforts to protect and restore the coastline. That distinctive culture, she said, depends on things like the oyster beds, the native grasses and the maritime forests that characterize the seashore and the scores of tidal and barrier islands here, collectively known as the Sea Islands.
“You don’t have that, you don’t have a Sea Island,” said Ms. Goodwine, who also goes by Queen Quet. “You don’t have a Sea Island, you don’t have Gullah Geechee culture.”
A Poorer Ocean
The new study tries to measure just how much various human-caused pressures are squeezing, shifting and transforming coastal and marine habitats.
The research began in the early 2000s, when widespread coral bleaching was raising alarm among marine scientists. In response, Dr. Halpern and his colleagues set out to map the parts of the ocean that were healthiest and least affected by humans and, conversely, which parts were the most affected.
The inherent challenge was comparing marine habitats, from coral reefs to the deep ocean floor, and their responses to different human activities and pressures, like fishing and rising temperatures, all on a common scale. They came up with what researchers call an impact score that’s based on a formula incorporating the location of each habitat, the intensities of the various pressures on that habitat, and the vulnerabilities of each habitat to each form of pressure.
Under the world’s current trajectory, the study found, by the middle of the century about 3 percent of the total global ocean is at risk of changing beyond recognition. In the nearshore ocean, which most people are more familiar with, the number rises to more than 12 percent.
That future will look different in different regions. Tropical and polar seas are expected to face more pronounced effects than temperate, mid-latitude ones. Human pressures are expected to increase faster in offshore zones, but coastal waters will continue to experience the most serious effects, the researchers forecast.
There are also countries that are considered more vulnerable because they depend more heavily on resources from the ocean: Togo, Ghana and Sri Lanka top the list in the study.
Across the whole ocean, scientists generally agree that many places will look ecologically poorer, with less biodiversity, Dr. Halpern said. That’s mainly because the number of species that are resilient against climate change and other human pressures is simply far fewer than the number of more vulnerable species.
The study found that the biggest pressures, both now and in the future, are ocean warming and overfishing. But the researchers most likely underestimated the effects of fishing, they wrote, because their model assumes that fishing activity will hold steady rather than increase. They also focused only on the species actually targeted by fishing fleets and did not include by-catch, the unwanted species swept up in gear like gill nets and discarded, or habitat destruction from bottom trawling.
The effects of some other human activities aren’t well represented either, including seabed drilling and mining, which are expanding quickly offshore.
Another limitation of the Science study is the fact that the researchers simply added together the pressures from human activities in a linear way to arrive at their estimate of cumulative effects. In reality, those effects might add up to more than the sum of their parts.
Even low-ranking global stressors can cause enormous damage to local ecosystems
How individual stressors contribute to cumulative impacts
“Some of these activities, they might be synergistic, they might be doubling,” said Mike Elliott, a marine biologist and emeritus professor at the University of Hull in England who was not involved in the study. “And some might be antagonistic, might be canceling.”
Even so, Dr. Elliott said he agreed with the broad conclusions of the new study. Scientists could argue about whether the cumulative effects of human activities will double or triple, he said, “but it will be more, because we’re doing more in the sea.”
“If we wait until we’ve got perfect data,” he added, “we’ll never do anything.”
‘Time to Scale It Up’
One of the benefits of such studies is that they can help inform better ocean planning and management, including initiatives like 30×30, the global effort to place 30 percent of the world’s land and seas under protection by 2030.
In South Carolina, one place that has already been set aside is the ACE Basin, a largely undeveloped 350,000-acre wetland on the state’s southern coast that is named for the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers, which thread through it.
Riding a boat across the enormous basin can be disorienting. The world flattens as the sun beats down and salt marsh stretches in every direction. Almost everything is a vivid blue or green, like an abstract painting or a map come to life.
White wading birds dot the green marsh grasses, and occasional groups of gray bottlenose dolphins break the blue surface of the water.
Sometimes the dolphins corral their fish prey onto the mud and temporarily beach themselves for a meal, using the salt marsh islands like giant dinner plates. This behavior, called strand feeding, is rarely seen outside the Southeast.
On a recent visit, in one tucked-away corner of the marsh, something emerged from the mud at low tide: a wall, built with concrete blocks now nearly hidden by thousands of shells. They’re called oyster castles, and they look like something out of a storybook about mermaids.
The blocks were placed by volunteers from the Boeing assembly plant in nearby North Charleston. The effort was organized by the Nature Conservancy and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources as part of a growing string of living shorelines projects, which aim to stabilize the coast using natural materials like shellfish and native vegetation, in South Carolina and beyond.
The oyster castles are meant to protect the landscapes behind them from erosion, sea level rise and storm surges. Scientists from the Nature Conservancy have been experimenting with a variety of methods for years, and are beginning to see results. Behind the oyster castles, which allow water to pass through and deposit sediment, mud had piled up significantly higher than elsewhere. And in the mud, marsh grass has taken root and grown tall.
“We’ve been testing and piloting things for so long, and now is the time to scale it up,” said Elizabeth Fly, director of resilience and ocean conservation at the Nature Conservancy’s South Carolina chapter.
In fact, the state’s oyster shell recycling program has now built small living shorelines at more than 200 sites, all with the help of volunteers, and often working with other groups, like the Gullah Geechee Nation. There’s a living shoreline taking shape at the Charleston wastewater treatment plant. Another at the entrance to the exclusive Kiawah Island Golf Resort. They’re at Marine Corps bases, at boat launches and at docks.
Many of these efforts are part of a sprawling network called the South Atlantic Salt Marsh Initiative, which includes the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Department of Defense, other federal agencies and state governments. The network spans one million acres of salt marsh across four Southeastern states.
Amid those efforts to reinforce and protect marine ecosystems, and as scientists work to better understand the pressures that are altering the oceans, people in coastal communities everywhere are already living changes large and small.
The day after Mr. Atkins demonstrated his fishing methods, the town of Mount Pleasant, S.C., 80 miles up the coast, held its annual Sweetgrass Festival to celebrate the region’s traditional Gullah Geechee baskets. Dozens of artists braved the heat in booths at a waterfront park, showing off and selling baskets woven from sweetgrass, bulrush, palmetto leaves and pine needles.
One artist and teacher, Henrietta Snype, displayed baskets made by five generations of her family, from her grandmother down to her own grandchildren.
Ms. Snype started making baskets at age 7. Now, at 73, she takes pride in upholding the tradition and teaching others the craft and its history. But she feels the world around her changing.
She said she had noticed the climate shifting for many years now. Big hurricanes seem to have become more frequent and seem to do more damage. And making baskets is harder, too.
Traditionally, the men in basket-making families went out into the dunes, marshes and woods to gather the materials they needed. But lately, Ms. Snype said, the plants have been harder to find. Sweetgrass is diminishing, and harvesters have trouble getting access to built-up and privately owned parts of the coastline.
“The times bring on a lot of change,” she said.
Methodology
Maps and table showing human impacts on oceans reflect estimates based on the SSP2-4.5 “middle of the road” scenario, which approximates current climate policy.
As the state continues multiyear marathon discussions on rules for what residents in wildfire hazard zones must do to make the first five feet from their houses — an area dubbed “Zone Zero” — ember-resistant, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to start creating its own version of the regulations that is more lenient than most proposals currently favored in Sacramento.
Critics of Zone Zero, who are worried about the financial burden and labor required to comply as well as the detrimental impacts to urban ecosystems, have been particularly vocal in Los Angeles. However, wildfire safety advocates worry the measures endorsed by L.A.’s City Council will do little to prevent homes from burning.
“My motion is to get advice from local experts, from the Fire Department, to actually put something in place that makes sense, that’s rooted in science,” said City Councilmember John Lee, who put forth the motion. “Sacramento, unfortunately, doesn’t consult with the largest city in the state — the largest area that deals with wildfires — and so, this is our way of sending a message.”
Tony Andersen — executive officer of the state’s Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, which is in charge of creating the regulations — has repeatedly stressed the board’s commitment to incorporating L.A.’s feedback. Over the last year, the board hosted a contentious public meeting in Pasadena, walking tours with L.A. residents and numerous virtual workshops and hearings.
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Some L.A. residents are championing a proposed fire-safety rule, referred to as “Zone Zero,” requiring the clearance of flammable material within the first five feet of homes. Others are skeptical of its value.
With the state long past its original Jan. 1, 2023, deadline to complete the regulations, several cities around the state have taken the matter into their own hands and adopted regulations ahead of the state, including Berkeley and San Diego.
“With the lack of guidance from the State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, the City is left in a precarious position as it strives to protect residents, property, and the landscape that creates the City of Los Angeles,” the L.A. City Council motion states.
However, unlike San Diego and Berkeley, whose regulations more or less match the strictest options the state Board of Forestry is considering, Los Angeles is pushing for a more lenient approach.
The statewide regulations, once adopted, are expected to override any local versions that are significantly more lenient.
The Zone Zero regulations apply only to rural areas where the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection responds to fires and urban areas that Cal Fire has determined have “very high” fire hazard. In L.A., that includes significant portions of Silver Lake, Echo Park, Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.
Fire experts and L.A. residents are generally fine with many of the measures within the state’s Zone Zero draft regulations, such as the requirement that there be no wooden or combustible fences or outbuildings within the first five feet of a home. Then there are some measures already required under previous wildfire regulations — such as removing dead vegetation like twigs and leaves, from the ground, roof and gutters — that are not under debate.
However, other new measures introduced by the state have generated controversy, especially in Los Angeles. The disputes have mainly centered around what to do about trees and other living vegetation, like shrubs and grass.
The state is considering two options for trees: One would require residents to trim branches within five feet of a house’s walls and roof; the other does not. Both require keeping trees well-maintained and at least 10 feet from chimneys.
On vegetation, the state is considering options for Zone Zero ranging from banning virtually all vegetation beyond small potted plants to just maintaining the regulations already on the books, which allow nearly all healthy vegetation.
Lee’s motion instructs the Los Angeles Fire Department to create regulations in line with the most lenient options that allow healthy vegetation and do not require the removal of tree limbs within five feet of a house. It is unclear whether LAFD will complete the process before the Board of Forestry considers finalized statewide regulations, which it expects to do midyear.
The motion follows a pointed report from LAFD and the city’s Community Forest Advisory Committee that argued the Board of Forestry’s draft regulations stepped beyond the intentions of the 2020 law creating Zone Zero, would undermine the city’s biodiversity goals and could result in the loss of up to 18% of the urban tree canopy in some neighborhoods.
The board has not decided which approach it will adopt statewide, but fire safety advocates worry that the lenient options championed by L.A. do little to protect vulnerable homes from wildfire.
Recent studies into fire mechanics have generally found that the intense heat from wildfire can quickly dry out these plants, making them susceptible to ignition from embers, flames and radiant heat. And anything next to a house that can burn risks taking the house with it.
Another recent study that looked at five major wildfires in California from the last decade, not including the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, found that 20% of homes with significant vegetation in Zone Zero survived, compared to 37% of homes that had cleared the vegetation.
Science
At 89, he’s heard six decades of L.A.’s secrets and is ready to talk about what he’s learned
Dr. Arnold Gilberg’s sunny consultation room sits just off Wilshire Boulevard. Natural light spills onto a wooden floor, his houndstooth-upholstered armchair, the low-slung couch draped with a colorful Guatemalan blanket.
The Beverly Hills psychiatrist has been seeing patients for more than 60 years, both in rooms like this and at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he has been an attending physician since the 1960s.
He treats wildly famous celebrities and people with no fame at all. He sees patients without much money and some who could probably buy his whole office building and not miss the cash.
Gilberg, 89, has treated enough people in Hollywood, and advised so many directors and actors on character psychology, that his likeness shows up in films the way people float through one another’s dreams.
The Nancy Meyers film “It’s Complicated” briefly features a psychiatrist character with an Airedale terrier — a doppelganger of Belle, Gilberg’s dog who sat in on sessions until her death in 2018, looking back and forth between doctor and patient like a Wimbledon spectator.
“If you were making a movie, he would be central casting for a Philip Roth‑esque kind of psychiatrist,” said John Burnham, a longtime Hollywood talent agent who was Gilberg’s patient for decades starting in his 20s. “He’s always curious and interested. He gave good advice.”
Since Gilberg opened his practice in 1965, psychiatry and psychotherapy have gone from highly stigmatized secrets to something people acknowledge in award show acceptance speeches. His longtime prescriptions of fresh food, sunshine, regular exercise and meditation are now widely accepted building blocks of health, and are no longer the sole province of ditzy L.A. hippies.
Beverly Hills psychiatrist Dr. Arnold Gilberg, 89, is the last living person to have trained under Franz Alexander, a disciple of Sigmund Freud.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
He’s watched people, himself included, grow wiser and more accepting of the many ways there are to live. He’s also watched people grow lonelier and more rigid in their political beliefs.
On a recent afternoon, Gilbert sat for a conversation with The Times at the glass-topped desk in his consultation room, framed by a wall full of degrees. At his elbow was a stack of copies of his first book, “The Myth of Aging: A Prescription for Emotional and Physical Well-Being,” which comes out Tuesday.
In just more than 200 pages, the book contains everything Gilberg wishes he could tell the many people who will never make it into his office. After a lifetime of listening, the doctor is ready to talk.
Gilberg moved to Los Angeles in 1961 for an internship at what is now Los Angeles General Medical Center. He did his residency at Mount Sinai Hospital (later Cedars-Sinai) with the famed Hungarian American psychoanalyst Dr. Franz Alexander.
Among his fellow disciples of Sigmund Freud, Alexander was a bit of an outlier. He balked at Freud’s insistence that patients needed years of near-daily sessions on an analyst’s couch, arguing that an hour or two a week in a comfortable chair could do just as much good. He believed patients’ psychological problems stemmed more often from difficulties in their current personal relationships than from dark twists in their sexual development.
Not all of Alexander’s theories have aged well, Gilberg said — repressed emotions do not cause asthma, to name one since-debunked idea. But Gilberg is the last living person to have trained with Alexander directly and has retained some of his mentor’s willingness to go against the herd.
If you walk into Gilberg’s office demanding an antidepressant prescription, for example, he will suggest you go elsewhere. Psychiatric medication is appropriate for some mental conditions, he said, but he prefers that patients first try to fix any depressing situations in their lives.
He has counseled patients to care for their bodies long before “wellness” was a cultural buzzword. It’s not that he forces them to adopt regimens of exercise and healthy eating, exactly, but if they don’t, they’re going to hear about it.
“They know how I feel about all this stuff,” he said.
He tells many new patients to start with a 10-session limit. If they haven’t made any progress after 10 visits, he reasons, there’s a good chance he’s not the right doctor for them. If he is, he’ll see them as long as they need.
One patient first came to see him at 19 and returned regularly until her death a few years ago at the age of 79.
“He’s had patients that he’s taken care of over the span, and families that have come back to him over time,” said Dr. Itai Danovitch, who chairs the psychiatry department at Cedars-Sinai. “It’s one of the benefits of being an incredibly thoughtful clinician.”
Not long after opening his private practice in 1965, Gilberg was contacted by a prominent Beverly Hills couple seeking care for their son. The treatment went well, Gilberg said, and the satisfied family passed his name to several well-connected friends.
As a result, over the years his practice has included many names you’d recognize right away (no, he will not tell you who) alongside people who live quite regular lives.
They all have the same concerns, Gilberg says: Their relationships. Their children. Their purpose in life and their place in the world. Whatever you achieve in life, it appears, your worries remain largely the same.
When it’s appropriate, Gilberg is willing to share that his own life has had bumps and detours.
He was born in Chicago in 1936, the middle of three boys. His mother was a homemaker and his father worked in scrap metal. Money was always tight. Gilberg spent a lot of time with his paternal grandparents, who lived nearby with their adult daughter, Belle.
The house was a formative place for Gilberg. He was especially close to his grandfather — a rabbi in Poland who built a successful career in waste management after immigrating to the U.S. — and to his Aunt Belle.
Disabled after a childhood accident, Belle spent most of her time indoors, radiating a sadness that even at the age of 4 made Gilberg worry for her safety.
“It’s one of the things that brought me into medicine, and then ultimately psychiatry,” Gilberg said. “I felt very, very close to her.”
He and his first wife raised two children in Beverly Hills. Jay Gilberg is now a real estate developer and Dr. Susanne Gilberg-Lenz is an obstetrician-gynecologist (and the other half of the only father-daughter pair of physicians at Cedars-Sinai).
The marriage ended when he was in his 40s, and though the split was painful, he said, it helped him better understand the kind of losses his patients experienced.
He found love again in his 70s with Gloria Lushing-Gilberg. The couple share 16 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. They married four years ago, after nearly two decades together.
“As a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist ages, we have the ability, through our own life experiences, to be more understanding and more aware,” he said.
It’s part of what keeps him going. Though he has reduced his hours considerably, he isn’t ready to retire. He has stayed as active as he advises his patients to be, both personally (he was ordained as a rabbi several years ago) and professionally.
For all the strides society has made during the course of his career toward acceptance and inclusivity, he also sees that patients are lonelier than they used to be. They spend less time with friends and family, have a harder time finding partners.
We’re isolated and suffering for it, he said, as individuals and as a society. People still need care.
Unlike a lot of titles on the self-help shelves, Gilberg’s book promises no sly little hack to happiness, no “you’ve-been-thinking-about-this-all-wrong” twist.
After 60 years working with Hollywood stars and regular Angelenos, Gilberg is ready to share what he’s learned with the world.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
His prescriptions run along deceptively simple lines: Care for your health. Say thank you. Choose to let go of harmless slights and petty conflicts. Find people you belong with, and stop holding yourself and others to impossibly high standards.
“People have the capacity to self-heal, and I have become a firm believer in that. Not everyone needs to be in therapy for 10 years to figure it out,” he said. “A lot of this is inside yourself. You have an opportunity to overcome the things and obstacles that are in you, and you can do it.”
So what is “it”? What does it mean to live a good life?
Gilberg considered the question, hands clasped beneath his chin, the traffic outside humming expectantly.
“It means that the person has been able to look at themselves,” he said, “and feel somewhat happy about their existence.”
The best any of us can hope for is to be … somewhat happy?
Correct, Gilberg said. “A somewhat happy existence, off and on, which is normal. And hopefully, if the person wants to pursue that, some kind of a personal relationship.”
As it turns out, there is no housing in happiness. You can visit, but nobody really lives there. The happiest people know that. They live in OK neighborhoods that are not perfect but could be worse. They try to be nice to the neighbors. The house is a mess a lot of the time. They still let people in.
Somewhat happy, sometimes, with someone else to talk to.
It is that simple. It is that hard.
Science
FEMA to pay for lead testing at 100 homes destroyed in Eaton fire, after months of saying it was unnecessary
In a remarkable reversal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce that the Federal Emergency Management Agency will pay for soil testing for lead at 100 homes that were destroyed by the Eaton fire and cleaned up by federal disaster workers.
The forthcoming announcement would mark an about-face for FEMA officials, who repeatedly resisted calls to test properties for toxic substances after federal contractors finished removing fire debris. The new testing initiative follows reporting by The Times that workers repeatedly violated cleanup protocols, possibly leaving fire contaminants behind or moving them into unwanted areas, according to federal reports.
The EPA plan, presented to a small group of environmental experts and community members on Jan. 5, said the agency would randomly select 100 sites from the 5,600 homes that had burned down in the Eaton fire and where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers oversaw the removal of ash, debris and a layer of soil. The soil samples would be collected near the surface and about 6 inches below ground.
Sampling is expected to begin next week, with test results published in April.
During the Jan. 5 presentation, some attendees questioned whether the testing would meaningfully assess whether properties are safe to rebuild on.
Local environmental health advocates worry the EPA testing is designed only to justify FEMA’s decision not to undertake comprehensive soil testing, instead of providing real relief to their communities.
“The EPA’s plan to run a study that retroactively validates a limited soil-removal response after the L.A. Fires is deeply concerning, especially when there is ample independent data indicating contamination persists beyond what was addressed,” said Jane Lawton Potelle, executive director of the grassroots environmental health group Eaton Fire Residents United, in a statement. “The hard truth is that meaningful contamination recovery still has not been funded or delivered by the federal government or the State of California.“
The EPA’s proposed approach is narrower than soil-testing efforts for previous fires in California. Although lead is one of the most common and dangerous contaminants left behind after fires, federal and state disaster officials have traditionally tested soil for 17 toxic metals, including cancer-causing arsenic and toxic mercury.
The EPA plan also calls for taking soil from 30 different parts of each cleanup area and combining them into one singular representative sample. That method doesn’t align with California’s soil-testing policy and could obscure “hot spots” of contamination on a property.
“If you don’t want to find a high number [of contaminants], you take a lot of samples and you mix them together,” said Andrew Whelton, a Purdue University professor who researches natural disasters.
“Based on the experimental design of [the EPA plan], I do not understand the purpose of what they’re doing, because it is not meant to determine if the properties are safe or not,” Whelton added.
For nearly a year, FEMA refused to pay for soil testing, insisting it was time-consuming, costly and unnecessary. FEMA, along with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, maintained that removing ash, debris and a layer of soil would be enough to rid properties of toxic substances.
Federal officials insisted any lingering contamination on properties likely predated the fire and was caused by decades’ worth of pollution from cars and industry.
Daisy Rosas Vargas, a chemist and soil scientist with SoilWise, a local soil health and landscaping consulting business, was skeptical that the EPA’s testing, now a year after the fire, could meaningfully distinguish fire-related contamination supposedly on the surface from any legacy contamination deeper underground.
Historic fire data showed about 20% of properties still contain toxic substances above California’s benchmarks for residential properties.
What’s more, a trove of federal reports obtained by The Times revealed federal contractors repeatedly deviated from their cleanup plans for the January 2025 fires, possibly leaving dozens of properties with toxic ash and debris.
FEMA hired inspectors to observe the cleanup process and document any issues; the resulting reports say, in some cases, that workers sprayed contaminated pool water on properties, walked through recently clean properties with dirty boot covers and mixed clean and contaminated soil by using improper equipment.
In one of the most egregious violations, an inspector noted that an official with Environmental Chemical Corp., the primary contractor hired to oversee debris removal in the Eaton and Palisades fires, ordered a work crew to dump ash and debris onto a neighboring property.
A spokesperson for the Army Corps said “all deficiencies logged by” federal inspectors were “addressed and corrected.”
“Our robust quality assurance program was staffed with hundreds of quality assurance inspectors and engineers,” the spokesperson said. “The deficiencies that were identified in the article were corrected immediately or before Final Sign Off.”
The agency did not provide any details about how workers resolved the alleged illegal dumping, or any other deficiencies.
Numerous soil-testing efforts had already found contamination above state standards. Los Angeles Times journalists launched a soil-testing project and published the first evidence that fire-destroyed homes in the Eaton fire still contained elevated levels of soil contamination, even after federal cleanup workers finished removing debris.
Los Angeles County and UCLA-led soil testing initiatives also found elevated levels of contaminants at Army Corps-cleared properties.
EPA officials said the agency would share soil-testing results with property owners, in addition to Los Angeles County and state agencies. However, they did not say whether they intended to remove another layer of soil if lead levels exceed state and federal standards.
After hearing about the EPA plan, Jessica Handy, one of the co-founders of the Dena Soil Project, a grassroots coalition focused on providing soil testing and other aid to those impacted by the Eaton fire, questioned the value of such testing without a commitment to cleanup. “If it does show that there’s still contaminants, what is the solution?” asked Handy, a Pasadena native. “We’re at risk of losing more community members because they’re afraid that they’re going to expose themselves, their families, their pets, their elders.”
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who previously called on federal disaster agencies to provide comprehensive soil testing for fire victims, sent an email to her constituents last week saying she is “seeking assurance that they take action if the results of their testing find contamination.”
The Army Corps and its contractors initially aimed to demobilize by Jan. 8, 2026, the one-year anniversary of the fires, but federal cleanup efforts finished much earlier than expected. Federal cleanup workers removed fire debris from the final home enrolled in the federal program in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades in early September.
Federal and state officials hailed the Army Corps efforts as the fastest major cleanup in modern American history.
As of Monday afternoon, FEMA and the EPA have not responded to questions sent by The Times regarding specifics of the testing plan.
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