DDT off Los Angeles: promises and follow-through
Every public commitment about the DDT dumped off the LA coast and the Palos Verdes Shelf Superfund site, next to what happened. The money and the science mostly arrived: — million in federal and state research funding was enacted. The cleanup decisions mostly haven't. Only — of — commitments came with a specific deadline, so most can't be scored as late, only as open.
If you fish here
The state's advice for fish caught between —, where the DDT and PCB contamination is concentrated. A serving is about the size and thickness of your hand. Choose one row per week, not one from each. This advice was issued — and has not been revised in — years. The advisory covers mercury and PCBs as well as DDT.
- Cook it to cut it. Eat only the skinless fillet, remove the skin before cooking, and let the juices drain away. These chemicals collect in the skin, fat and guts.
- White croaker is the clearest warning. It's on the do-not-eat list for everyone, and commercial fishing for it near the shelf has been closed since 1990.
- The trend is good news. A 2024 Scripps study found DDT in local fish fell from 1998 to 2021, and most recreational catch is now below state limits. The exceptions are bottom-dwellers such as halibut caught near the shelf.
- Still unknown. That study covered nearshore fish, not the deep dumpsites off Catalina. Federal cancer and seafood studies requested by Congress were declined or kept narrow. EPA's updated risk assessment, the basis for any new advice, is listed for 2026, and we haven't found it published.
Sources: OEHHA advisory · EPA Fish Contamination Education Collaborative · UC San Diego, Oct 2024. This is a summary, not medical advice. Check the advisory before you eat your catch.
The waiting clock
Every commitment not yet fully delivered, measured from the day it was made to today. The bars grow by themselves. — are still open, adding up to — years of waiting. — of them never had a date, so they can't be late, only longer.
Where follow-through happened, and where it didn't
Commitments by subject, colored by outcome.
Requested, enacted, awarded
Research money since 2022, kept as three separate numbers. A blank bar means no public figure was found, not zero. Spending is not reported anywhere we could find.
Where it is
Seafloor sediment samples from the Southern California Bight regional surveys, sized by total DDT (ng per gram of dry sediment), plus EPA's 2013 cores on the Palos Verdes Shelf, with the historical dump sites, the White Point sewage outfalls that fed the Palos Verdes Shelf, and the spots where an ROV sampled beside individual barrels in 2021. Hover anything for details.
Not on the map, because no public source gives coordinates: the outline of Dumpsite 2 (only its center point is published), the 2021 sonar survey area and its barrel-like detections (published only as figures, with supplementary files behind a bot check), the official Palos Verdes Shelf Superfund boundary (described only in words, though EPA's 2013 cores, shown as squares, trace the contaminated shelf), and the fish advisory and white croaker catch-ban zones (defined by compass bearings and pier names). The missing geometry is itself part of the record.
The ledger
Each commitment with who made it, when, how firmly, and what happened. Both the claim and the outcome link to a source.
| Said | Who | Commitment | Outcome |
|---|
Corrections and changes
When something on this page turns out to be wrong or incomplete, the fix is logged here with the date and the reason. Last change: —.
How we got here
Dumping, discovery and the science since, each from a dated source.
How this was built
A commitment is any public statement with something checkable in it: money, a study, a sampling plan, a cleanup step or a report. Each is paraphrased neutrally and linked to the statement itself (press releases, letters, bills, budgets, EPA decisions) and to the best available record of what happened. Status is as of October 19, 2026.
"Unknown" means no public outcome was found, not that nothing happened. Several agency promises came with no date ("later in the spring"), so they're scored on whether they happened at all. Kept promises are recorded as carefully as missed ones; this is a ledger, not a verdict.
The map uses SCCWRP Bight survey sediment results (total DDT is the sum of six DDT compounds, non-detects counted as zero), dump site positions from a 1985 Regional Water Board report and federal regulations, outfall positions from the plant's discharge permits, EPA's 69 Palos Verdes Shelf cores from its 2018 monitoring report (Tables 3-1, 3-2 and 3-5, collected October 2013, top 8 cm), and USGS records of 2021 ROV samples. One 2023 station reads far above its neighbors in earlier years; it is shown as published. The land outline is Natural Earth, coarse at this scale.
Two widely repeated figures are softer than they sound: counts of barrel-like objects found in 2021 range from "up to 25,000" to "more than 27,000" depending on the source, and the 2021 sea lion cancer study names "persistent organic pollutants," not DDT alone.