EPA Announces Soil Sampling Initiative to Help LA Residents Further Validate Fire Cleanup Success and Strengthen Future Wildfire Response

EPA Announces Soil Sampling Initiative to Help LA Residents Further Validate Fire Cleanup Success and Strengthen Future Wildfire Response

Voluntary sampling effort builds on historic cleanup operations, establishes advanced best practices for nationwide wildfire response

January 13, 2026

LOS ANGELES - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced it will conduct soil sampling at randomly selected properties in the Eaton fire area to help residents validate the effectiveness of Los Angeles wildfire cleanup efforts and develop best practices for future wildfire responses nationwide. This voluntary effort, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), follows the successful completion of EPA's historic cleanup operations in February 2025.

Following those operations, EPA has continued to support Californians by initiating additional testing to confirm cleanup success and refine future response strategies. This proactive step goes beyond the agency's standard disaster response protocols and demonstrates EPA's commitment to transparency and continuous improvement. The sampling will focus on lead, based on scientific evidence from an extensive study conducted by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in September 2025.

EPA will collect soil samples at two depths, at the bottom of excavations completed during debris removal and approximately 6 inches below, to measure lead concentrations and develop a statistical model that will inform future wildfire response protocols. The county's study, which analyzed various contaminants including heavy metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), dioxins, and furans, found that lead was the only fire-related pollutant detected across the Eaton area after debris removal.

"The Trump EPA successfully completed one of the most ambitious wildfire cleanup operations in our nation's history, safely removing hazardous debris from thousands of affected properties in record time," said Administrator Lee Zeldin. "This additional sampling effort demonstrates our continued commitment to Los Angeles residents. By establishing data-driven best practices today, we're ensuring that EPA and our partners will be even better prepared to protect American communities in future wildfire disasters."

To ensure accuracy, EPA is applying an incremental sampling methodology that provides a reliable average of contaminant levels across each property. Crews will collect 30 small soil samples from different locations on each parcel, combine them into a composite sample, and send it for laboratory testing. This approach offers a more representative picture of site conditions than testing from just a few individual points.

The sampling effort will document post-cleanup soil conditions, confirm that cleanup methods successfully addressed contamination, and establish evidence-based protocols that will strengthen wildfire response efforts nationwide.

EPA is working closely with LA County, the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), and other partners throughout this process. Individual property owners will receive reports with their lead results and guidance on available resources from local and state agencies. EPA will also share aggregated findings with county officials to support long-term recovery and resilience planning. Results from the sampling effort are expected by the end of spring 2026.

Following the Los Angeles wildfires in 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing EPA to complete Phase 1 hazardous material removal within 30 days so that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) could proceed with Phase 2 debris removal. The Administration's coordinated response became one of the largest and fastest federal wildfire recoveries in U.S. history.

EPA's Los Angeles response marked the agency's largest wildfire cleanup ever. In just 28 days, EPA teams surveyed and cleared 13,612 residential and 305 commercial properties for debris removal, safely disposing of more than 1,000 lithium-ion batteries from vehicles, homes, and other devices. More than 1,600 EPA staff from all ten regional offices deployed to support this unprecedented operation.