Fire Season is upon us. You will be cited by the LA county Fire Department if you don’t clean up your brush. So why is LA County preventing Malibu residents from clearing their properties?
Drive around many Malibu neighborhoods, and you’ll see brush piled high along the road, the new Green Waste trash containers overflowing with excess brush, and even some people dumping green waste in arroyos and other open areas – all just waiting for the tossed cigarette or an inadvertent spark to reprise the ’93 firestorm.
That the new trash contract with the county doesn’t work for much of Malibu is painfully obvious. The prophetic warnings of some our neighbors are coming true. Its September. Fall. Fire season. We don’t have the luxury of waiting for endless studies. We need action by the County now.
The old system worked well for brush clearance: It allowed residents to bundle excess green waste and have multiple trash cans. This was picked up twice a week. But the new system, using the big green trash cans designed for flat lots of five or six thousand square feet, doesn’t work for many residents with properties over an acre. It doesn’t work for people with steep driveways. It doesn’t work for senior citizens. And it doesn’t work for people who do their own brush clearance on a weekly basis.
While the County is under a State mandate to promote recycling and keep green waste out of garbage dumps, putting Malibu at risk of another fire isn’t an acceptable solution. I’ve spoken to the City trash consultant, a supervisor from the contractor, and the County trash supervisor. The excuse seems to be that the contract is already signed and the County won’t allow the contractor to pick up anything but the green cans. None of this helps our community mitigate the fire danger. We need immediate action by the City and County to solve this problem.
Scott Dittrich