State contractors on Wednesday began installing and staking fiber logs to prevent erosion on properties in Los Angeles County free of all ash and debris caused by the Woolsey Fire and whose soil samples meet state health and environmental standards, officials with the Debris Removal Operations Center (DROC) in Calabasas reported today.
The installation of fiber logs is the first of two erosion control measures state crews will implement on each property before state debris removal officials conduct a final walk through and provide local officials with documentation verifying that all aspects of the debris removal process are complete. Contractors will return to each site within three workdays to apply a wood-based mulch on each property.
The installation of erosion control measures signifies the completion of debris removal operations. Next, soil samples taken from each property will be analyzed to confirm the soil meets state health and environmental standards. To date, soil samples from 71 properties in Los Angeles County have been approved.
Contractors continue to make progress conducting site assessments and asbestos surveys, completing asbestos abatements, where needed, and removing debris from properties in Los Angeles affected by the Woolsey Fire and properties in Ventura County affected by both the Woolsey and Hill fires.
State crews have completed site assessments on 760 properties in Los Angeles County and 96 in Ventura County. The 760 properties assessed represent 97.4 percent of the LA County properties so far eligible for the state’s Consolidated Debris Removal Program. The 96 Ventura County sites assessed represent 98 percent of the properties from that county eligible to date.
Additional work completed to date includes 745 asbestos surveys and 72 asbestos abatements in LA County, as well as 83 asbestos surveys and nine abatements in Ventura County.
The 745 asbestos surveys represent 95.5 percent of those LA County properties eligible for the state program, while the 72 abatements represent 82.8 percent of properties in that county that were determined to contain bulk asbestos containing materials (ACMs). The 83 completed asbestos surveys in Ventura County represent 84.7 percent of the eligible properties in that county, while the nine abatements represent 100 percent of the properties in there that contained bulk ACMs.
To date, state crews have cleared eligible debris from 147 properties in Los Angeles County and from 22 parcels in Ventura County. Further action on those properties is pending the results of testing and analysis within the next two weeks by a state-certified laboratory of soil samples collected at each property to determine whether the soil samples meet state health and environmental standards.
Under the state program, administered by CalRecycle and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), property owners who opt in incur no direct costs for the removal of eligible debris. Debris removal operations on the 148 cleared sites followed earlier site assessments, asbestos surveys and, where necessary, asbestos abatements of those properties.
Property owners who have submitted ROEs can meet one-on-one with debris removal experts from their respective counties to discuss the status of their ROEs and issues related to their property at the Debris Removal Operations Center (DROC) located at 26610 Agoura Road in Calabasas. The DROC is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturdays.
Debris officials will notify property owners who have opted in to the state program 24-48 hours prior to the start of debris removal operations on their property. Property owners may walk the property with crews before work begins.
For more information in Los Angeles County, visit lacounty.gov/LACountyRecovers or call 1-626-979-5370. For more information in Ventura County, visit www.venturacountyrecovers.org or call 1-805-504-7869.
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