A Ritzy L.A. Enclave Learned a Bitter Lesson About the Limits of Its Wealth
19 comments
·August 24, 2025codeulike
paywalled. tldr: A posh bit of LA called Calabasas, home to "Will Smith, John Travolta, Justin Bieber, Kevin Hart, Jessica Simpson, Jake Paul, Katie Holmes, Kanye West and a bunch of Kardashians" happens to have a Landfill site in it, which most of the posh people had not noticed was there. The LA fires of 2025 generated 2.6 million tons of waste - more than the entire city of Philadelphia produces in a year. That waste was _potentially_ classifiable as toxic but the official site for toxic waste was too far away for such a large amount so someone decided to send it to local landfills including Calabasas. There was legal basis for local landfills to accept fire waste. Then there's lots of details about how posh people tried to stop it from happening but it happened away. "That, for many residents, was the most haunting revelation of all. The 2025 fires had augured a future in which even a Calabasan could suffer sudden and catastrophic environmental injustice."
mrangle
>"which even a Calabasan could suffer sudden and catastrophic environmental injustice."
What a crazy tactic to switch blame from the City of LA's total failure, to prevent and stop the fire, to the environment.
Everyone knows that California is dry. Everyone knows that everything West of the Mississippi is dry. For how long? Much longer than industry has existed.
I'd consider it to be a failure of environmental advocacy to be so ham-fisted so as to drive people away from policy support because you can't fight the impulse to abuse the issue to publicly absolve the guilty.
cratermoon
Multiple bitter lessons
1. Somehow people moving into houses that went for $4 to $25 million didn't notice or bother to check that there's a landfill a mile from their houses.
2. Ash waste from last year's huge wildfires needs a place to go, but it's de facto toxic.
3. A waiver granted to allow the toxic waste to be dumped into landfills not rated for handling it.
4. Rich people find they have no more power than residents of Flint, MI
Addendum: at least the cops are deferential to the crowd of protestors that include rich white moms with a babies. They didn't declare a "riot" and didn't fire teargas or rubber bullets at anyone.
mediumsmart
They want me to subscribe to read a about the ritzy enclave. Came for the bitter lesson, not disappointed.
koliber
Newspapers used to be printed on paper and no one batted an eye when they were asked to fork over a few quarters per issue. It was not considered ritzy or posh to read about what is going on. Someone needs to pay those people who create the papers.
Now that newspapers are online, somehow it's ritzy to be able to read and the fact that people have jobs which involve creating newspaper content is a bitter lesson.
netsharc
The price was mostly symbolic (if they were free people would probably abuse it, e.g. for paper to line your birdcage with), and it was ads in the paper that paid for the business.
Heck, now we have multi-billion dollar companies selling us ads (Google, Meta) but no one wants to pay the people whose jobs include investigating government corruption (as well as reporting on Taylor Swift getting a ring...). Somewhat understandably, since ads on the Internet are much more obnoxious than ads on newspaper/magazines.
Mars008
People got spoiled with free content. Some never in their life payed for a newspaper. The problem is subscribing to one or two sources is not enough. You will miss a lot. To understand what happens in Chine you better read Chinese, and not BBC's interpretation. Now that there are so many free translating tools it's easy. The same about every conflict. There are two sides at least. Your favorite source will show most likely only one. Test it on Ukraine or Gaza.
nottorp
> a few quarters per issue
Not X dollars per month with a yearly commitment that auto renews and for which you need to stay on hold for 6-12 hours to cancel...
Cry me a river.
If "newspapers" really wanted my money they'd band up and set up a micropayments agency so I could pay them for the issue i'm interested in again.
But they're only chasing whales instead so I have zero compassion.
strken
The NYT is $23/month and I live in Australia. I'd be happy to pay them a dollar or two and buy an issue containing a known and limited set of articles from a particular date, but a subscription is irrelevant to me and I would bankrupt myself if I paid to subscribe to every newspaper that paywalls me.
koliber
I agree that it has become hard to buy single issues in the digital world. I have some digital subscriptions, and would be happy to pay a bit here and there for one-off issues.
stockresearcher
You used to be able to buy the daily NYT printed edition in Canberra and Sydney at the very least. I’d actually be pretty surprised if you can’t still do it.
FireBeyond
"I don't want to pay for content, and don't you dare push advertising on me. I want your content. I don't care how you have to pay to make it, that's not my problem."
conductr
If people bounce without reading or paying, how much do they really want the content?
Articles like this might get me with a headline but once I hit a paywall I realize very quickly how little I care.
devmor
Newspapers also used to be heavily syndicated or covered the same large subjects, while keeping 2-3 to a geographical area.
Now that newspapers are online, an end user may be presented with hundreds or thousands of them, asking for a subscription.
nickfromseattle
A trick.
Archive.is --> URL you want to view --> https://archive.is/xaMbk
null
This is about where to put the toxic waste created by the Palisades (7,000 homes) and Altadena (9,400 structures) fires.
The process removes the top 12" and replaces with with clean fill. The governor granted an exemption from California Environment Quality Act (CEQA), and recent legislation passed will streamline or waive the process for all future development. The material will go somewhere, the question is which NIMBY is the recipient.
Probably worth noting that before the CEQA revamp legislation this year, 50% of all California construction development was challenged/thwarted with lawsuits by the same people for multiple or no reasons. That usually resulted in one or two years of delays, with the cost added to the construction. The price to build "affordable" housing in California is $700,000 to $1,000,000.
https://www.pacificresearch.org/newsom-right-to-waive-ceqa-f...