Science

Leaked memo reveals California debated cutting wildfire soil testing before disaster chief’s exit

Published

3 weeks ago

January 16, 2026

Leaked memo reveals California debated cutting wildfire soil testing before disaster chief’s exit

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s disaster chief quietly retired in late December amid criticism over the state’s indecisive stance on whether soil testing was necessary to protect survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires.

One year ago, Nancy Ward, then the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spearhead the cleanup of toxic ash and fire debris cloaking more than 12,000 homes across Los Angeles County.

Although Ward’s decision ensured the federal government would assume the bulk of disaster costs, it came with a major trade off. FEMA was unwilling to pay for soil sampling to confirm these homes weren’t still heavily contaminated with toxic substances after the cleanup — testing that California state agencies have typically done following similar fires in the past.

Following intense backlash from fire survivors and California lawmakers, Ward pleaded with FEMA to reconsider its soil-testing stance, writing in a Feb. 19 letter that it is “critical to protect public health” and “ensure that survivors can safely return to their homes.” Her request was denied.

However, in October, Cal OES — under Ward’s leadership — privately considered discontinuing state funding for soil testing in the aftermath of future wildfires, according to a confidential, internal draft memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The Times requested an interview with Ward, and sent questions to her office asking about her initial decision to forgo soil testing and for clarity on the future of state’s fire recovery policy. Ward declined the request; The Times later published an article on Dec. 29 about allegations that federal contractors illegally dumped toxic ash and misused contaminated soil in breach of state policy.

Ward, who served as Cal OES director for three years, retired on Dec. 30; her deputy director, Christina Curry, stepped into the role as the interim chief. Ward also did not respond to several requests for comment for this article.

Ward was the first woman to serve as Cal OES director. She had also previously served as a FEMA regional administrator, overseeing federal disaster response in the Southwest and Pacific Islands from 2006 to 2014.

A Cal OES spokesperson said Ward’s retirement had been planned well in advance.

“Director Nancy Ward has been a steady hand and a compassionate leader through some of California’s largest disasters,” the spokesperson said. “Her decades of service have made our state stronger, safer, and more resilient. The Governor is deeply grateful for her dedication and wishes her the very best in retirement.”

The internal memo obtained by The Times was written by Ward’s assistant director, and titled: “Should the state continue to pay for soil testing as part of Private Property Debris Removal (PPDR) programs? ”

It laid out three possible answers: The state could keep funding soil testing after future wildfires; the state could defer soil testing decisions to the affected counties with the possibility of reimbursing them; or the state could stop paying for soil testing entirely.

A Cal OES spokesperson said the memo was only a draft and did not represent a policy change. “The state’s position on soil testing remains unchanged,” the spokesperson said. “California is committed to advocating for the safe, timely removal of wildfire debris. Protecting the public health and well-being of impacted communities remains the state’s foremost priority.”

The primary reason for soil testing is to prevent harmful exposures to toxic metals, such as brain-damaging lead or cancer-causing arsenic. Since 2007, comprehensive soil testing has been conducted after 64 wildfire cleanups in California, according to the memo. When soil contamination still exceeded state benchmarks after the initial cleanup, the state government redeployed cleanup workers to remove more dirt and then retest the properties.

This approach, the memo said, was critical in identifying harmful substances that “pose exposure hazards via ingestion, inhalation of dust, or through garden/food production.” Soil testing “helps ensure the safety” of children, seniors, pregnant women and people with health issues who are “more vulnerable to soilborne toxins.”

“The State has a long precedent of conducting or paying for soil testing,” the Cal OES assistant director wrote in the memo.  “Pivoting from this would be a significant policy change.”

The memo cites a report from CalRecycle, the agency that has historically carried out state-led fire cleanups, that stresses the importance of the current practice to public health.

“Soil contamination after a wildfire is an invisible threat,” wrote a CalRecycle official. “If not properly cleaned and remediated in a methodical way, property owners may encounter additional hurdles during the rebuilding process and suffer additional trauma.”

“Soil sampling,” the official adds, “is the metric by which Recyclable demonstrates that debris removal operations have successfully remediated the post-disaster threat to public health and the environment.”

However, such soil testing and additional cleanup prolongs the cleanup timeline and can make it more expensive. The memo cites cost estimates from CalRecycle which show that soil testing and additional cleanup work usually costs some $4,000 to $6,000 per parcel, representing 3% to 6% of overall debris removal costs.

The state cost projections align with those made by independent environmental experts. Andrews Whelton, a Purdue University professor who researches natural disasters, estimated that soil testing and further remediation for the Eaton and Palisades fire would cost between $40 million to $70 million.

All told, the CalRecycle report states the usual soil-testing process has been a “relatively low-cost step” to safeguard public health.

Further, although soil testing may add some cost, when it’s taken as a proactive measure, it can save money down the road.

Forgoing soil testing and evidence-backed remediation can generate uncertainty about toxic contamination, which in turn could lower the value of homes in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Whelton said. What’s more, the property owner may be liable for soil contamination if they fail to disclose environmental risks when selling or leasing.

The internal CalOES memo alludes to this give and take: “Funds saved initially by skipping testing may be outweighed by later unseen costs, for example, reinvesting in remediation, addressing community complaints, litigation, or cleanup failure.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has fielded over 1,100 complaints filed by property owners affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires — over 20% of which were related to the quality of work. According to internal reports obtained by The Times, federal cleanup repeatedly deviated from cleanup protocols, likely spreading contamination in the process.

Since then, FEMA officials have backed down from their hard-line stance against paying for post-fire soil testing in California in an attempt to shore up public confidence in the federal cleanup.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that FEMA will conduct a limited lead-testing program in the Eaton fire burn scar that is intended to “confirm the effectiveness of cleanup methods,” according to an EPA spokesperson. The initiative has already come under the scrutiny of environmental experts who say it lacks the rigor of California’s soil testing regimen.

It remains unclear if California will continue to implement soil-testing safeguards that made the state a national leader in fire recovery. Though state officials say these will remain unchanged, there is no legal mandate to follow these procedures.

The internal CalOES memo circulated under Ward’s leadership has only added to the cloud of uncertainty.

One thing is clear: It’s a moot point for survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fire.

As state and federal officials debated the value of soil testing, most Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents have been left to investigate the extent of environmental fallout on their own.

Science

Video: Why Mountain Lions in California Are Threatened

Published

11 hours ago

February 9, 2026

Press Room

Video: Why Mountain Lions in California Are Threatened

new video loaded: Why Mountain Lions in California Are Threatened

Six subpopulations of mountain lions in California face mounting threats, including habitat fragmentation from highways, urban sprawl, and wildfires, as well as widespread rodenticide poisoning. Loren Elliott, a photojournalist for The New York Times, shows how he documents these elusive animals.

By Loren Elliott, Gabriel Blanco and Rebecca Suner

February 9, 2026

Science

Torrance residents call for the ban of ‘flesh-eating’ chemical used at refinery

Published

2 days ago

February 8, 2026

Press Room

Torrance residents call for the ban of ‘flesh-eating’ chemical used at refinery

Residents and advocates gathered Saturday to demand the ban of a chemical that’s used at a Torrance oil refinery and that they say has the potential to cause a mass casualty disaster.

Hydrofluoric acid is used in about 40 gasoline refineries across the United States, according to the National Resources Defense Council. The defense council states that “exposing as little as 1% of a person’s skin to HF (about the size of one’s hand) can lead to death. When inhaled, HF can fatally damage lungs, disrupt heart rhythms, and cause other serious health effects.”

The Torrance Refinery uses modified hydrofluoric acid, or MHF, which the refinery considers to be a safer alternative to HF, though the claim is disputed by advocates. Steve Goldsmith, president of the Torrance Refinery Action Alliance, which hosted the Saturday event, said that if MHF were to be been released into the air, it would create irreversible health effects within 6.2 miles of the refinery, trickling into other parts of Los Angeles County.

And in 2015, he said, this almost happened.

On Feb. 18, 2015, there was an explosion at the refinery, then operated by ExxonMobil, caused by the rupture of an eroded valve. The incident, which released flammable hydrocarbons, injured four workers and forced 14 schools into lockdown.

The Saturday event, held at North High School’s Performing Arts Center in Torrance, marked the 11th anniversary of the explosion.

Goldsmith described the chemical as “murderous.”

Audience members participate in a “peace clap” at North Torrance High as they listen to speakers against the use of hydrofluoric acid in the Los Angeles region and across the country.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Torrance Refinery had an enormous explosion, and a piece of equipment the size of a bus came within five feet of the hydrofluoric acid, causing a near miss,” Goldsmith said. “We’ve been working to get rid of it.”

Residents like Christopher Truman say replacing MHF with an alternative option is the least that can be done. His parents live near the refinery.

“I’m born and raised in the South Bay, and my family lives in, effectively, what would be the blast radius if another accident happened,” Truman said. “So just in that aspect, I’m very worried about it.”

MHF is also used to clean semiconductor surfaces and produce pesticides and herbicides in the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries, according to the Torrance Refinery.

County Supervisor Janice Hahn said residents should not assume “they will be lucky” if another refinery accident were to occur.

“Only two refineries in California use MHF, Torrance Refinery and the Valero Refinery in Wilmington,” Hahn said. “MHF is simply too dangerous to use. It is a flesh-eating, low-crawling, toxic vapor cloud. Our communities will not be safe until this chemical is gone.”

Goldsmith said a Chevron refinery in Salt Lake City found an ionic-liquid alkylation process as an alternative to MHF. He added that the 2025 Chevron refinery explosion in El Segundo “would have been different if they had been using MHF.”

“They used another chemical that did not endanger the community,” Goldsmith said. “And that’s the thing about refineries, they have explosions. But that’s why you can’t have [MHF] around things that can blow up.”

U.S. Representative

Congressmember Maxine Waters appears on a video message explaining her legislation

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, (D-Los Angeles), who represents the city of Torrance, greeted attendees in a prerecorded message, in which she reintroduced her bill, the “Preventing Mass Casualties from Release of Hydrofluoric Acid at Refineries Act,” which targets plants using MHF.

“I originally introduced this bill in December of 2024,” Waters said in the video. “I faced considerable opposition, especially from the United Steel Workers Union, [who were] concerned that if refineries converted to safer technologies, some of the refineries might close, leaving workers without jobs. They agreed with me that hydrofluoric acid is dangerous. But they still would not support my bill. So I decided to go ahead and reintroduce this bill, [without] union support.”

The bill would give refineries five years to find an alternative to the dangerous chemical. Violators may be subject to fines up to $37,000 per infraction.

Supervisor Janice Hahn speaks out against the use of hydrofluoric acid in the Los Angeles region and across the country

Some residents stressed the need for transparency from local officials.

Ian Patton, a Long Beach resident, said most parts of the investigation into the 2015 explosion were withheld.

“Why can’t they not make this report public? The [Torrance Refinery Action Alliance] has been asking for it for years,” Patton said. “The next step was to look at litigation under the California Public Records Act. It’s not something that we want to do, but the public deserves to know whether these plants are safe.”

Science

TrumpRx is launched: How it works and what Democrats say about it

Published

2 days ago

February 7, 2026

Press Room

TrumpRx is launched: How it works and what Democrats say about it

WASHINGTON — The White House’s TrumpRx website went live Thursday with a promise to instantly deliver prescription drugs at “the lowest price anywhere in the world.”

“This launch represents the largest reduction in prescription drug prices in history by many, many times, and it’s not even close,” President Trump said at a news conference announcing the launch of the platform.

Drug policy experts say the jury is still out on whether the platform will provide the significant savings Trump promises, though it will probably help people who need drugs not commonly covered by insurance.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, called the site a “vanity project” and questioned whether the program presents a possible conflict of interest involving the pharmaceutical industry and the Trump family.

What is TrumpRx, really?

The new platform, trumprx.gov, is designed to help uninsured Americans find discounted prices for high-cost, brand-name prescriptions, including fertility, obesity and diabetes treatments.

The site does not directly sell drugs. Instead, consumers browse a list of discounted medicines, and select one for purchase. From there, they either receive a coupon accepted at certain pharmacies or are routed directly to a drug manufacturer’s website to purchase the prescription.

The White House said the reduced prices are possible after the administration negotiated voluntary “most favored nation” agreements with 16 major drugmakers including Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk.

Under these deals, manufacturers have agreed to set certain U.S. drug prices no higher than those paid in other wealthy nations in exchange for three-year tariff exemptions. However, the full legal and financial details of the deals have not been made public, leaving lawmakers to speculate how TrumpRx’s pricing model works.

What does it accomplish?

Though the White House has framed TrumpRx as a historic reset for prescription drug costs, economists said the platform offers limited new savings.

But it does move the needle on the issue of drug pricing transparency, away from the hidden mechanisms behind how prescription drugs are priced, rebated and distributed, according to Geoffrey Joyce, director of health policy at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics.

“This has been a murky world, a terrible, obscure, opaque marketplace where drug prices have been inconsistently priced to different consumers,” Joyce said, “So this is a little step in the right direction, but it’s mostly performative from my perspective, which is kind of Trump in a nutshell.”

Still, for the uninsured or people seeking “lifestyle drugs” — like those for fertility or weight loss that insurers have historically declined to cover — TrumpRx could become a useful option, Joyce said.

“It’s kind of a win for Trump and a win for Pfizer,” Joyce said. “They get to say, ‘Look what we’re doing. We’re lowering prices. We’re keeping Trump happy, but it’s on our low-volume drugs, and drugs that we were discounting big time anyway.’”

Where does it fall short?

Early analyses by drug policy experts suggest many of the discounted medications listed on the TrumpRx site were already on offer through other drug databases before the platform launched.

For example, Pfizer’s Duavee menopause treatment is listed at $30.30 on TrumpRx, but it is also available for the same price at some pharmacies via GoodRx.

Weight management drug Wegovy starts at $199 on TrumpRx. Manufacturers were already selling the same discounted rates through its NovoCare Pharmacy program before the portal’s launch.

“[TrumpRx] uses data from GoodRx, an existing price-search database for prescription drugs,” said Darius N. Lakdawalla, a senior health policy researcher at USC. “It seems to provide prices that are essentially the same as the lowest price GoodRx reports on its website.”

Compared to GoodRx, TrumpRx covers a modest subset of drugs: 43 in all.

“Uninsured consumers, who do not use or know about GoodRx and need one of the specific drugs covered by the site, might benefit from TrumpRx. That seems like a very specific set of people,” Lakdawalla said.

Where do Democrats stand?

Democrats slammed the program this week, saying it would not provide substantial discounts for patients, and called for greater transparency around the administration’s dealings with drugmakers. To date, the administration has not disclosed the terms of the pricing agreements with manufacturers such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

In the lead-up to the TrumpRx launch, Democratic members of Congress questioned its usefulness and urged federal health regulators to delay its debut.

“This is just another Donald Trump pet project to rebrand something that already exists, take credit for it, and do nothing to actually lower healthcare prices,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Friday. “Democrats will continue fighting to lower healthcare costs and push Republicans to stop giving handouts to billionaires at the expense of working-class Americans.”

Three other Democratic senators — Dick Durbin, Elizabeth Warren and Peter Welch — raised another concern in a Jan. 29 letter to Thomas March Bell, inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The three senators pointed to potential conflicts of interest between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx.

One of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr., joined the BlinkRx Board of Directors in February 2025.

Months before, he became a partner at 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm that holds a significant stake in BlinkRx and led the startup’s $140-million funding round in 2024. After his appointment, BlinkRx launched a service to help pharmaceutical companies build direct-to-patient sales platforms quickly.

“The timing of the BlinkRx announcement so closely following the administration’s outreach to the largest drug companies, and the involvement of President Trump’s immediate family, raises questions about potential coordination, influence and self-dealing,” according to an October 2025 statement by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Both BlinkRx and Donald Trump Jr. have denied any coordination.

What’s next?

The rollout of TrumpRx fits into a suite of White House programs designed to address rising costs, an area of vulnerability for Republicans ahead of the November midterms.

The White House issued a statement Friday urging support for the president’s healthcare initiative, dubbed “the great healthcare plan,” which it said will further reduce drug prices and lower insurance premiums.

For the roughly 8% of Americans without health insurance, TrumpRx’s website promises that more high-cost, brand-name drugs will be discounted on the platform in the future.

“It’s possible the benefits will become broader in the future,” Lakdawalla said. “I would say that the jury remains out on its long-run structure and its long-run pricing effects.”