Guarding Against Toxic Neighbors : * Affluent Areas Also at Risk From Polluting Plants

Orange County is learning what San Jose did painfully some years ago about those so-called “clean” biomedical industries. Some of them emit harmful toxic wastes, even though they may be set in nicely landscaped suburban corporate settings. A recent review of federal chemical inventory records by The Times indicates that people in Orange County are more likely to live next to a large source of industrial toxics in some of the affluent neighborhoods than they are in the barrios.

The harmful effects of pollutants in the environment are well known where they are most visible. That’s so for developing countries like Mexico, or in Poland, where daily pollution counts can far exceed acceptable limits. In this country, we generally think of low-income minority areas such as East Los Angeles when we hear about pollution threatening residential neighborhoods. But toxic chemicals, like foul weather, threaten one and all--even in the newest neighborhoods, such as the affluent residential section of Irvine that borders block after block of corporate parks.

The idea that clean industry makes the suburbs exempt from the threat of emissions is a myth. And, often, high-tech firms such as Bentley Laboratories in Irvine are where they are because that’s where the scientists and skilled workers live.

To date, much of the burden of playing watchdog has fallen to the individual resident. That must change. Only since 1989, when a national computerized database became accessible to the public, has it been possible to find out which companies use large amounts of toxic chemicals. The evidence was found in annual inventories to the federal government detailing what gets released into the air.

The regulation of such emissions by environmental agencies is conducted on a separate track from the planning function of local municipalities. So while decisions about the siting of such industrial plants fall to local land-use agencies, environmental oversight is carried out by somebody else. That has left the residents interested in local review with an information gap.

There is encouraging news in the county’s worst trouble spots: Bentley Laboratories is cutting output of toxic materials, and the Unocal chemical plant in Brea, which uses ammonia to manufacture chemical fertilizers and has led the list of toxic sources in Orange County every year, plans to shut down in 1993 to consolidate operations.

But there’s still a widespread problem; according to county health officials, thousands of industries that generate toxic waste are sprinkled throughout the county, following no discernible socioeconomic pattern.

Nobody should plan in a vacuum nowadays. Local land-use agencies ought to be aware of the concerns of the appropriate environmental agencies. Many local development plans are already scrutinized on environmental grounds.

It makes sense for local planners to become informed on these issues, to better meet their responsibilities to protect the health and safety of residents. The public is not well served if the planning process ignores the threat of toxic emissions simply because they cannot be seen.

Moreover, Orange County has a special burden because of the desirability and multiple uses of the land. There are all kinds of neighbors living in close proximity here.

The safety of the county’s citizens depends both on the willingness of the companies to fulfill their corporate responsibility as good neighbors and on the ability of local land-use agencies to work with environmental regulatory bodies.