Lawmakers Fear Losing Battle on Toxic Waste Plant

Still reeling from their recent failure to stop the state’s first commercial toxic waste incinerator in Vernon, local lawmakers said they may lose a similar battle over another proposed toxic waste plant a mile away.

The state Department of Health Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are considering granting Pennsylvania-based Chem-Clear Inc. final permits to build a toxic waste chemical treatment facility one mile from the site of the controversial hazardous waste burner.

Local lawmakers said this week that they suspect federal and state health officials are on the verge of granting permits without ordering a full environmental impact report for the proposed treatment plant at Slauson and Boyle avenues.

“It would seem that that is the case,” said Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles), one of two Assembly members who conducted a public hearing Tuesday on toxic substances near public schools. “I get the impression that they are going to sit back and let it happen,” she said in an interview after the hearing.

Impact Report Discussed

Two state health officials attending the hearing acknowledged that they have not ordered Chem-Clear to prepare an impact report. But they declined to say whether they are planning to approve the construction plans without it. When asked after the hearing whether the department plans to issue a permit without requiring an environmental report, health services spokesman Peter Peterson said, “I can’t say if that is the case.”

The Assembly Education Committee hearing, held at Huntington Park High School--within 1,000 feet of the site of the proposed Chem-Clear plant--was convened to gather information for legislators who want to strengthen existing laws and introduce new anti-toxic waste legislation.

The new laws would be designed to protect the millions of schoolchildren who attend the state’s 11,000 public schools from exposure to toxic substances, including asbestos.

Hughes, chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee, said schoolchildren statewide are increasingly being exposed to dangerous substances. “Our students’, our children’s lives are in jeopardy,” she said before hearing testimony about several schools that have recently been affected by nearby hazardous waste.

Asbestos Danger

Richard Steffens, an official with the Assembly Office of Research, said only about 2,000 schools have submitted plans to remove asbestos from their buildings. “No one knows how many schools have escaping asbestos fibers,” Steffens said. Asbestos causes a variety of lung ailments, including cancer, Steffens said.

“What good are math and reading skills if our children’s lives are captive to an environment that is unhealthy,” Hughes said as she opened the sparsely attended conference, which included testimony by 18 state officials, local activists, teachers and students.

She said the Huntington Park site was selected because of local concerns over the Chem-Clear project. In recent months, teachers and high school students staged rallies and collected residents’ signatures on petitions protesting the proposed plant. The petitions were sent to Gov. George Deukmejian by the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

“That (the plant) is certainly a kind of dramatic illustration of the imminent danger that our children face,” she said.

The Chem-Clear plant would neutralize up to 60,000 gallons daily of cyanide, hexavalent chromium and other hazardous chemicals. The diluted chemicals are then disposed of in local landfills or the county sewer system.

Chem-Clear officials have attempted to calm fears of a chemical spill or leak into the surrounding environment.

Company Spokesman

“Chem-Clear is a company concerned with the quality of life and understands the concerns people naturally have when the term ‘hazardous waste’ is used,” Chem-Clear spokesman Xavier Hermosillo said Wednesday in a telephone interview. The plant “operates in a closed system from start to finish,” he said. A closed system, Hermosillo addeded, is one in which the chemicals are handled “in such a way that they are never exposed to open air.”

He also said he does not believe that state approval is imminent.

The EPA two weeks ago approved a plan by the Orange County-based California Thermal Treatment Services Inc. to begin building the $29-million waste incinerator on Bandini Boulevard, about a mile north of the Chem-Clear site.

The approval came two months after the company received state permits, despite the intense lobbying efforts of local politicians and community leaders. Among other things, local community leaders complained that the incinerator site would be too close to residents of the densely populated suburban section of Southeast county.

“The CTTS approval set a dangerous precedent,” Bell City Councilman George Cole said in a recent interview. Bell is one of 5 small cities that surround industrial Vernon.

“All they (state health officials) do is rubber-stamp what the company comes up with,” Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) told health spokesman Peterson during his testimony about the department’s efforts to control toxic waste near schools. “They don’t do any independent study.”

Seek Risk Assessment

State health officials have ordered Chem-Clear to prepare a risk assessment study before the state agency considers its approval, officials said. A risk assessment is a “very limited technical study” of the cancer risk to residents living near a site where toxic waste substances are stored, Peterson explained.

According to opponents of the project, that action indicates that the state agency soon may issue its final approval without requiring the impact report, despite the pleas of community leaders, environmental activists and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

An environmental impact report is more wide-ranging than a risk assessment study. It includes not only the technical effects of the plant to the immediate vicinity, but it takes into consideration how increased traffic, noise and other plant-related activities affect the surrounding community.

Peterson said after the hearing that the department has the option of requiring the risk assessment report, a detailed environmental impact report, or both. The risk assessment study, which is conducted by the company, was ordered because of community opposition to the project, Peterson said.

Roybal-Allard blasted the state Department of Health Services for ordering the risk assessment study, but not a detailed environmental impact report.

“The (Department of Health Services), the EPA, these agencies do not exist for the health and safety of the people,” Roybal-Allard said angrily during Peterson’s testimony. “I’d be surprised if they say no to any company.”

Peterson responded by saying that if the risk assessment is not complete, “it is something we can ferret out.”

Petitions Presented

Opponents have also complained that the project would draw highly toxic chemicals into their communities. Dozens of trucks per day would rumble past the seven local schools within a mile of the proposed plant site to unload the toxic chemicals. More than 17,000 students in a mile radius of the proposed plant site would face evacuation if a chemical spill occured.

“Within a 3-mile radius, there are 55,000 children,” said Cudahy education commissioner Larry Galvan. “Four of those are mine,” he said. Galvan presented petitions bearing another 2,800 signatures demanding an environmental impact report.

Health and safety problems in schools that are near toxic waste products is well documented, several experts testified.

For instance, the Tweedy Elementary School in South Gate was permanently closed, and 28 students were hospitalized because of a chlorine leak from the nearby Purex Corp. facility. Plans to build a high school in that city were abandoned because of its proximity to another toxic chemical site.

In San Dimas, 100 students were taken to area hospitals when acetic acid fumes escaped from an industrial plant adjacent to the school yard. And at the Suva Elementary and Intermediate schools in Bell Gardens, several teachers blamed miscarriages on hexavalent chromium fumes from a nearby metal plating factory. State health officials have concluded that the level of hexavalent chromium in the atmosphere around the school was not high enough to induce miscarriages of teachers working at the Suva schools.

Students at the Griffin Elementary in Lincoln Heights were evacuated when a metal-plating factory caught fire. Officials worried that barrels of cyanide and hydrosulfurous acid would cause a toxic cloud.