2025-128 Los Angeles County Department of Public Health

To ensure that it approaches all responses to health hazard events in a consistent manner, LADPH should, by January 2027, adopt policies and procedures that define its four areas of response activity, establish the key information that staff and leadership must consider when determining the responsive actions that are necessary, guide staff in making those determinations, and establish how staff and leadership should document their decisions.

To ensure that it monitors its responses to health hazard events and adjusts its approach based on any opportunities for improvement it observes, LADPH should, by January 2027, adopt and implement a policy to regularly review its responses to health hazard events for the purpose of noting what went well and was aligned with its policies and procedures, as well as the areas in which its response did not meet its expectations or led to negative feedback from the community. LADPH should also document its reviews for future reference.

To ensure that the public is informed about the health risks of the air in the communities near the landfill, the Board of Supervisors should by November 2026 direct LADPH to update its public website monthly and make available at monthly CAC meetings LADPH’s assessment of the health risks associated with any exceedances of RELs that LADPH identifies through its review of air quality monitoring data published by Chiquita or other sources. These assessments should, at a minimum, include an identification of the chemicals that exceeded RELs, as well as LADPH’s rationale for its health risk assessment.

To ensure that LADPH and the county have adequate and current information about the health effects of the chemical reaction, the Board of Supervisors should, by November 2026, direct LADPH to periodically collect information about health symptoms and other relevant information from residents and community members and publish the results in a format accessible to the community. The Board of Supervisors should require that LADPH’s information collection efforts include proactive attempts to contact and collect information from residents and community members directly, as opposed to relying on passive collection methods.

To ensure that LADPH’s engagement with the community near the landfill is sufficient, the Board of Supervisors should, by November 2026, direct LADPH to develop a community engagement plan that would apply to its response to the conditions at the landfill. LADPH should create this plan with direct input from the community near the landfill, and the plan should specify the ways in which LADPH will ensure that it maintains two-way communication with community members and promptly addresses the concerns that the community expresses.

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