Lineage will not meet its cleaning deadline, L.A. Mayor confirms

At an online public forum this afternoon, Mayor Karen Bass said Lineage Logistics will not meet the city's cleaning deadline to clean up and remove waste from the facility. 

At the forum, Bass provided residents with an update on the warehouse cleanup and said her team visited the warehouse located in Boyle Heights on Thursday. 

“To no surprise to anyone, we know that the work is not done,” she said in the forum. “It is completely unacceptable.”

Tomorrow, Friday, August 15, marks the 45-day deadline imposed via an executive order issued by Bass on June 29.

The cold storage facility, which went up in flames on June 17, burned for a week, leaving local residents in the middle of ongoing environmental and health hazards. 

Since then, Lineage Logistics stated it would spend between $80 million and $100 million on cleanup efforts to clear out roughly 88 million pounds of decomposing food waste from the fire site. 

The initial executive order did not specify what would happen if Lineage Logistics does not meet the upcoming deadline, but Bass said on Thursday afternoon that the city could pursue civil litigation against the cold storage company. 

This week, CALÓ News visited the site and saw some of the cleaning efforts and tools, including the fixed odor-control spray systems located around the building to deodorize the air, the food waste loads that were sealed and fly traps that have been put around the premises. 

On Wednesday, according to the company’s latest update, the removal of food waste was about 92% complete. 

Once the food waste is completely out of the warehouse, the multi-million dollar company will also have to conduct thorough power washing and disinfection within seven days, a mandate implemented by the South Coast Air Quality Management District after receiving more than 4,000 odor complaints, all tracing back to the cold storage warehouse where tons of food continue to rot. 

Lineage Logistics said earlier this week it expected to remove the bulk food waste by the end of the week.

Today Bass said the city does not truly know where the company is in its cleaning efforts. 

“We continue to make meaningful progress against this massive cleanup effort every single day, and we will keep working until the job is done,'' Jeff Rivera, Lineage Logistics' chief operating officer, said in a statement released Tuesday.

The same week of the cleaning deadline, state leaders also announced proposed legislation aimed at increasing penalties and imposing additional requirements on cold storage facilities like Lineage Logistics.  

On Wednesday, Assemblymember Mark González and State Sen. María Elena Durazo announced legislative proposals that would require any new cold storage facility in the city and county to create a contingency fund for emergencies.

At a press conference held in Boyle Heights, González said their proposed legislation would also ensure that anyone who sues over the fire doesn't have to pay state taxes on any settlement. 

In the last ten years, the company has had at least 63 fires in and around its Lineage facilities worldwide, some involving its buildings, vehicles, or trash on its sites, as stated in a recently publishedCBS News investigation. 

The company acknowledged 34 building fires, including fires in Finley, Washington; Pasadena, Texas; Everett, Washington; and Massachusetts. 

The CBS investigation also stated that, according to government watchdog data, Lineage has incurred $4.5 million in penalties for alleged workplace safety and environmental violations.

Community members have also demanded that Lineage Logistics leave Boyle Heights immediately after the cleanup ends. 

Last month, Bass also issued an emergency executive order directing city departments to halt the processing of rebuilding plans for the Lineage Logistics cold storage. After Lineage applied to rebuild, the executive order mandated the departments of city planning and building and safety to stop processing any rebuilding or repair applications submitted by the company. 

Regarding the future of Lineage in the city, Bass said the halting of the company’s rebuilding plans still stands.