Suit Settlement Requires Bilingual Notices

Under the terms of a lawsuit settled Friday, Los Angeles County officials must print notices in Spanish as well as English warning residents of impending environmental actions in their neighborhoods.

The suit was filed after years of bitter complaints from Spanish-speaking residents of the northeast San Fernando Valley. Those complaints culminated in protests in 1993 over expansion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

Residents said they were unaware of the expansion plans because information notices were printed only in English.

The settlement terms provide that for the first time public notices on all projects governed by the California Environmental Quality Act must be published in Spanish as well as English.

“I am very happy about this decision,” said Roberto Mariscal, the Sylmar resident who filed the suit in 1994 after learning about Sunshine Canyon’s expansion plan the day before the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors was slated to vote on it.

Lawyers from the county could not be reached for comment.

Also, under terms of the settlement the county must provide a Spanish-speaking representative to explain impending CEQA actions by telephone, and notices must be printed in a Spanish-language newspaper.

The county also agreed to provide $15,000 to help fund a voter-registration program aimed at increasing community involvement of northeast Valley residents, who are about 70% Spanish-speaking.

“We were missing a lot of things in our communities because we weren’t listening closely enough,” Mariscal said. “Now, hopefully people will start to notice things going on and say, ‘Hey let’s go do something about it.’ ”

The decision affects only parts of the county not governed under individual city laws, according to Kate Neiswender, the Sierra Club lawyer who represented Mariscal with the help of a Latino advocacy group.

The suit comes on the heels of complaints by Valley Latinos that poor and minority-dominated neighborhoods disproportionately endure environmentally hazardous industries such as factories and landfills.

“Sticking this up in . . . my minority community with no notices was a breech of the anti-discrimination clause of the county General Plan,” Neiswender said. “Spanish-speaking residents couldn’t get involved because they didn’t know what was going on.”