Pollution Feared From Concrete Facility : Lennox Residents to Fight LAX Plan for Plant

Angered by mounting traffic and pollution problems, a group of Lennox residents has vowed to oppose a plan by Los Angeles International Airport to construct a concrete batching plant on airport property adjacent to their community.

Even though airport officials have offered to compromise and move the plant farther away from homes, schools and businesses, the Lennox residents say they still believe the facility could cause more environmental problems in an area already hard hit by urban blight and severe carbon monoxide pollution.

“It’s just another nail in the coffin,” said Harry Lenczyk, president of the Lennox Coordinating Council, a group of about a dozen area activists.

“We’re sacrificing our living conditions for everybody else,” Lenczyk added.

The council has garnered the support of Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn--who represents Lennox--the Lennox School District and the Coalition of Concerned Communities, an organization of more than 12 homeowner groups stretching from El Segundo to Culver City.

The Federation of Organizations for Conserving Urban Space, a Los Angeles area environmental group, also has sided with the council, disputing the airport’s contention that the plant would not cause any significant environmental problems.

“The airport is a case of Dracula watching over the blood bank,” said Alexander Man, chairman of the federation. “. . . Their notion of environmental protection would be laughable if it was not so sad.”

Awaiting FAA Approval

Airport officials are awaiting Federal Aviation Administration approval of the project before submitting it to the Board of Airport Commissioners, which ultimately will decide its fate. The federal agency reviews all construction projects to ensure that they conform to height and other restrictions. Airport officials said the plant falls well within FAA guidelines.

Airport officials signed a preliminary agreement last year with Torrance-based Greene’s Ready Mix Concrete to construct the facility on airport-owned land on the west side of La Cienega Boulevard near 106th Street. The agreement calls for Greene’s to pay the airport $5,196 a month under a 20-year lease.

However, last January LAX officials, bowing to public pressure, announced that they were dropping plans for that site and, instead, would recommend to commissioners that it be built a quarter-mile west of La Cienega Boulevard on 111th Street between Aviation Boulevard and Hindrey Avenue.

The new site, which presently is an airport satellite parking lot, was selected because it was farther away from Lennox neighborhoods and flight paths and provided better street access for trucks, according to the officials.

The plant would cover about an acre and would operate up to 12 hours a day. It would consist of storage silos, conveyors and hoppers. The plan calls for no building to exceed 43 feet in height. An environmental impact statement did not say how much concrete would be produced at the plant.

Maurice Laham, who heads LAX’s environmental management office, said in an interview this week that unlike most concrete batching plants, the one proposed by LAX would be fully enclosed to ensure that concrete dust and other pollutants do not escape into the air or onto nearby streets.

Additionally, trucks using the facility would be washed as they enter and leave, he said, and the water used for washing the trucks would be recycled and used in the cement-making process.

Although concrete batching plants traditionally have been a pollution source, the proposed plant is technologically superior to the older plants, Laham said.

“I think some of the people in Lennox feel they have been put upon by the freeway and the airport and other public facilities,” he said. “And so they are very concerned and probably suspect of just about every project.

“They want to make sure to the greatest extent possible that whatever is built will be attractive and an addition to the community. We feel this will not run counter to their wishes.”

Although Greene’s does not have an ongoing contract with the airport to sell it concrete, Douglas Ring, an attorney for the company, speculated that most of the concrete produced at the plant would probably be sold to LAX or other customers for use in the immediate area.

Ring asserted that almost any other type of development in the area, including an office building, could create more traffic and pollution problems that the proposed plant.

Too Close to Lennox

“Everything, including a mortuary, would generate more pollution than this facility,” Ring said.

Despite the airport’s willingness to move the plant, Lenczyk and Joe Rudy, another member of the Lennox Coordinating Council, said they still believe it is too close to Lennox, a 1-square-mile unincorporated area.

“It was just a token gesture on the part of the airport,” Rudy said. “It just moves it a few hundred yards here and a few hundred yards there.”

Both men said that although the proposed plant’s design is different from existing concrete plants, there still is no assurance that all the concrete dust can be contained at all times, or that the plant will work efficiently, especially as it ages.

“As it gets older, it will probably deteriorate,” Lenczyk said.

Worst Pollution in State

Even without the plant, both men said, Lennox already experiences some of the worst air pollution in Southern California, especially when it comes to carbon monoxide generated by vehicles.

A spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District said that the agency’s air-pollution monitoring station in neighboring Hawthorne typically records the second highest carbon monoxide readings for the South Bay each year, exceeded only by Lynwood. In 1986, carbon monoxide levels in exceeded federal standards for 18 days. The district maintains 32 monitoring stations in four counties.

Both Lenczyk and Rudy said Lennox could experience more air pollution and traffic congestion once the new Century Freeway, which will straddle the borders of Lennox and Hawthorne, is completed.

“We are not letting this one slip,” Lenczyk said. “We got enough problems.”