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After the big Napa, CA fire, it was learned that the county (and maybe state) have to inspect all of your burned-out house waste before allowing it to be sent to a landfill. Of course, they had 5% or less of the inspectors they needed to inspect every burned out house, so the inspection process alone too a year. Then you can start the design and permitting process for your replacement home.

The irony is these very hot fires incinerate everything on site including anything that might have been toxic, so the chances of finding any remaining toxic waste are very low. But here's the Nervous Nellie Pantywaist Liberal writing at the "Los Angeles Public Press" on toxic waste at burn sites:

Environmental health experts have a clear message to Angelenos returning to the blackened remains of their homes and businesses: protect yourself from harmful toxins in the ash and air.
“Burn sites can be a kind of toxic waste dump,” said Chris Field, the Perry L. McCarty director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Even treasured possessions can become dangerous after they’ve been through a fire.”
While typical wildfires eat up natural undergrowth, urban fires tear through manmade materials with all sorts of dangerous and often carcinogenic substances. Think transformers containing PCBs. Typical household items containing heavy metals like lead. Copper piping. Building materials with asbestos. Electrical wires coated in toxic polyvinyl chloride. Cars with lithium-ion batteries. Furniture full of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and other household products made with volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Copper pipes are toxic? The same copper pipes that we get our drinking water from?

In the "Author is an uninformed idiot" category, he wrote "Think transformers containing PCBs." He is just shooting from the hip, dredging that up from the cobwebs of his mind.

In 1979, EPA banned the manufacture, processing, and distribution of PCBs under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The ban allowed for the continued use of PCBs in existing electrical equipment, such as transformers, until the end of their useful life.

TSCA was passed FORTY SIX years ago. Most utilities have had programs for years to either replace the entire transformer or refill it with non-toxic fluid. The EPA database of PCB filled transformers shows no such transformers in California.

shyster toxic experts ought to be placed in the dump themselves!

The proper disposal of toxic/contaminated material is to incinerate it.

If newsome was truly smart and wante to save his own political ass, he would do the following.

Peel of some of the money for immigrant support.

Start with one city block, and place large bins every few houses on the curb.

Get the front loaders running, paid or volunteer, and scrape the property clean.

Troubleshoot the power, overhead or buried, and set up a temp service panel for each lot.

Obtain fema trailers and place them on the property to the side of the former residence, and hook up tyo services as available.

This gives the family a place to stay, eat drink and sleep, their temp home.

expedite plan approval, keep the permit process, for the safety of all, but hire more reviewers/engineers at planning to open up the bottleneck there. Lighten up on the coastal commision bullshit, tell the naysayers to stifle their tongues, and most likely can break ground by Spring. Get that block looking good, and the tidal wave of rebuild will be contageous.

The problem is always the government and their regs with the boot on the neck.

Allow people to do what they do, and the rebuild will explode.

This in turn will make the unemployment lowest it has been in years.