Why Did Lassen County Fail to Notify the Public About Hexazinone Contamination?

A full Protect Lassen investigative report on Lassen County Chief Administrative Officer Maurice Anderson is coming soon. Anderson has been in possession of DPR-confirmed hexazinone contamination findings since October 2, 2025, along with two certified laboratory results from early June 2025 confirming hexazinone contamination in water and sediment, yet he has taken no action to notify neighboring or downstream property owners, despite knowing contaminated water flows across multiple private parcels. The County’s Agricultural Commissioner, Gary Fensler, who is appointed by the Lassen County Board of Supervisors, has also refused to alert the public or notify any property owners affected by the confirmed chemical contamination. Instead, Anderson and the five County Supervisors — Mike Scanlan, Gary Bridges, Tom Neely, Aaron Albaugh, and Jason Ingram — have remained completely silent for more than six months, failing to warn residents and failing to investigate the source site of the contamination: an RRF Lassen-Plumas LLC logging project where large-scale aerial herbicide was sprayed across a seventy-acre area outside the project’s legal boundaries, managed by W.M. Beaty & Associates. Their continued refusal to act or notify the public functions as a coordinated concealment of a confirmed environmental contamination event with no CEQA coverage and no Lahontan Water Board permit of any kind. Protect Lassen is now examining why county leadership chose to protect the operators instead of protecting the public.

Coming soon!