Tide of Protest : Neighbors Angry Over Fumes Hope to Close Spa Company

Susan Wurtz was at a loss to understand why her 4-year-old son, Brian, still suffered severe asthma attacks several months after Halloween, when the boy’s autumn round of bouts with the respiratory ailment traditionally cease.

Each weekend in March, Wurtz said, Brian had to be taken to a hospital emergency room to ease his breathing. During the week, the boy’s eyes would turn red with irritation, she said, and he would often complain of nausea.

“After the first of the year, when we expected the good times to come, he got very ill,” Wurtz said. “He is old enough now to know he should be better,” she said, adding that he asks repeatedly when his condition will improve.

Now an answer may be close at hand.

Simi Valley city officials last week notified a spa and bathtub manufacturer at a light industrial park near Moreland and Madera roads, 300 feet from the Wurtzes’ neighborhood, that the city is moving to revoke its permit to operate because the company is emitting “obnoxious” fumes.

The fumes have triggered an outcry by 95 residents who signed petitions asking city officials to halt the emissions, which they believe pose a serious health risk. If the company, Hydro Systems, loses its permit, it probably will shut down, leaving about 65 people out of work, said Hydro Systems owner Alan Steinhardt.

It is a controversy that the city could have averted had its planners sought readily available information on fiberglass manufacturing processes such as the one Hydro Systems uses, Ventura County Air Pollution Control District officials said. But city officials issued a zoning clearance for the company to move into the industrial park last November without checking with the district.

“We are familiar with this kind of manufacturing process,” said Neil Moyer, the pollution control district’s chief compliance investigator. “It is the kind of thing you want to keep away from population centers.”

The fumes result from styrene vapors that are emitted during the manufacture of fiberglass goods, such as bathtubs and boats.

Federal and state environmental agencies list styrene as a hazardous material because above certain levels, it can cause respiratory problems, severe headaches and nausea, said Greg Smith, a health specialist with the Ventura County Environmental Health Department.

He said Hydro Systems’ emissions, however, are below the level the agencies deem unsafe. But, he noted, the odor can be detected at an emission level 50 times below what is presumed dangerous.

In Ventura County, the pollution control district is the principal government agency that regulates industrial emissions. Yet no Simi Valley official asked for advice from the district before allowing the company to move to its present site, said Dick Baldwin, the district’s director.

“And it’s too bad, because styrene stinks,” Baldwin said.

Cities in Ventura County are not required to check with the district before approving tenants of industrial parks, Moyer said, although he would like to see the practice become more common.

Stacks Proposed

On July 22, the Simi Valley Planning Commission is scheduled to consider Hydro Systems’ offer to build three 75-foot stacks to release the fumes higher into the atmosphere. But, Steinhardt said, he already has received a hand-delivered letter from Diane Davis-Crompton, the Simi Valley community relations director, informing him that city planners were recommending that the offer be turned down because of aesthetic reasons.

Hydro Systems offered to build the stacks to assuage the concerns of residents who maintain that the emissions cause the respiratory ailments, headaches and nausea that some say they’ve experienced.

“After the first of the year, we started noticing this strong chemical smell,” said Ann Singleton, who lives in the west-end neighborhood across Madera Road from Hydro Systems.

“My stomach got upset and my 11-year-old son began waking up with a cough,” Singleton said. “Then, I started talking with others in the neighborhood, and I discovered I wasn’t alone.”

City planners also will recommend that the planning commission revoke Hydro Systems’ permit to operate unless it installs an afterburner system to capture the styrene emissions before they escape the plant, Davis-Crompton said.

But such a system is expensive, said Steinhardt, who estimated it would take $700,000 to buy and $48,000 a year to operate and maintain. “I couldn’t afford that in a million years.”

Steinhardt said he anticipates closing down his business permanently if the city revokes its permit.

‘Sense of Relief’

But residents say they are not yet ready to celebrate a victory in their battle against Hydro Systems.

“I have just been so tormented for so long, I’m finally beginning to feel a sense of relief,” Wurtz said. “But I’m also a little scared because it’s not over yet.”

Hydro Systems’ move to Simi Valley was its fourth since the company was established in 1979. “Each time we needed a bigger place,” Steinhardt said. “I’ve never run into a problem with residents like this. It’s not like I need this kind of trouble.”

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates industrial emissions in Los Angeles County, said it received only one complaint about Hydro Systems’ emissions during the eight years it operated in Van Nuys and North Hollywood.

After an investigation of that complaint, district enforcement officers found no evidence of emissions standards violations, a district spokeswoman said.

Simi Valley officials say the city has no choice but to move to revoke Hydro Systems’ right to operate because it is violating a portion of the city code that “prohibits industries in the light industrial zone from producing obnoxious odors.”

“Maybe they didn’t understand our zoning codes,” said Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton. “But I guess you have to look at it from the standpoint that it is illegal and can’t be tolerated any more than a dope pusher or house of prostitution could be.”

Hydro Systems will be able to appeal any unfavorable decision from the planning commission to the Simi Valley City Council, said City Atty. John P. Torrance.

But members of the council are not expected to support the company, said Mayor Pro Tem Vicky Howard. “We’ve written into our codes that we won’t tolerate obnoxious odors,” she said.