Federal officials have declared they will not order soil sampling after completing debris removal on Los Angeles properties that succumbed to the region’s devastating fires earlier this year, rebuffing concerns raised by state officials about potential contamination.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D) administration last week appealed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in a bid to revive the once-routine testing.

"As practice on all past major fire recoveries, we urge FEMA to conduct comprehensive soil sampling as part of the debris removal process at affected properties," Nancy Ward, director of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), wrote in a letter to Curtis Brown, federal coordinating officer for FEMA Region 9. "Without adequate soil testing, contaminants caused by the fire can remain undetected."

She warned that failing to implement such sampling could "expose individuals to residual substances during rebuilding efforts and potentially jeopardize groundwater and surface water quality."

FEMA, however, has reaffirmed its decision to forgo the sampling and instead task the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with eliminating waste and clearing the top 6 inches from ravaged properties without conducting follow-up soil tests.

"The mission assignment USACE was given does not include soil testing," said Susan Lee, a spokesperson for the Army Corps, in an emailed statement. "The decision regarding soil testing is outside of USACE’s role, as it is not part of our assigned responsibilities for this disaster."

Although FEMA has funded and conducted soil sampling at some of California's biggest wildfires over the past two decades, the federal agency changed its approach in 2020, Brandi Richard Thompson, a spokesperson for FEMA Region 9, told The Hill in an emailed statement.

Based on lessons learned from past fires and in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), FEMA "stopped funding soil testing as a routine practice and adopted the 6-inch removal standard," Richard Thompson said.

These instructions by no means bar private individuals or state entities from conducting soil testing themselves, and scientists from the University of California and Loyola Marymount University have begun conducting soil sampling efforts themselves.

Seth John, an associate professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California who is working on the sampling, told The Hill in a recent interview that although he believes "it's always better to have more information," the lack of FEMA-funded soil sampling is not necessarily a cause for alarm.

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