Grocery Firms Accused of Polluting Air
Claiming that people living near supermarket distribution centers face an excessive cancer danger from breathing diesel truck fumes, California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren and environmental groups sued four of the state’s largest grocery chains Tuesday.
The lawsuits target a Vons distribution center in Santa Fe Springs, a Ralphs facility in Los Angeles, Lucky Stores operations in Buena Park and San Leandro, and a Stater Bros. center in Colton.
The environmental groups said that their goal is to get the grocery chains to convert their entire fleets to cleaner-burning fuels, such as liquefied natural gas.
At the supermarket distribution centers, a continuous stream of 18-wheelers pick up and drop off goods, spewing exhaust laden with particles and other pollutants that have been linked to respiratory disease. Supermarkets own some of the largest fleets of diesel trucks in California.
“These four companies came up on our most-wanted list,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, a senior attorney with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. “Their distribution centers are smack in the middle of residential neighborhoods and these facilities are huge. We’re talking hundreds, if not thousands, of trucks driving in and out of their facilities every day.”
The five centers were targeted because they are among the largest in the state and generate heavy truck traffic near residential areas.
Vons spokesman Brian Dowling said diesel trucks are the “single best and most cost-efficient” way to ship goods to stores.
“We’ve looked at alternatives, but right now there is not a suitable alternative that can handle the kind of tonnage that is going in our stores,” he said.
“We try to be a good neighbor. We try to be a good employer. But we’ve got to bring product into that distribution center from various places and we’ve got to get it out to the stores.”
Judy Decker, a spokeswoman for Lucky, said the company believes that it “provides a clean and safe working environment for our employees, and we feel we’ve been a good neighbor.”
The attorney general’s lawsuits allege that the four companies failed to warn their workers and nearby homeowners and schools of the cancer risk as required under Proposition 65, the state’s landmark 1986 anti-toxics law. The state’s suit was filed after the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Coalition for Clean Air and the Environmental Law Foundation filed a complaint against the supermarkets with Lungren’s office.
In the suit, the attorney general’s office charges that the supermarket companies “expose thousands of people to diesel truck exhaust without providing warnings.”
The coalition of environmental groups simultaneously filed their own lawsuits on similar grounds.
The lawsuits are noteworthy under Proposition 65 in that they target businesses that had been considered fairly benign for residential areas, rather than the usual factories and refineries that most people associate with toxic fumes.
Indeed, some people living near Ralph’s distribution center northeast of Glendale said they were not particularly bothered by the truck fumes that are part of the neighborhood landscape.
“We would like clean air, of course,” said Cecilia Nunez, 52, who has lived two blocks from the center for 26 years. “But there’s trucks and cars in the whole city.”
Feuer said the litigation “culminates a year’s investigation” in which the environmental groups monitored the air in homeowners’ yards near each facility.
The environmentalists said their research shows that residents living near the five facilities are breathing about 15 times more diesel exhaust than the average person in the Los Angeles Basin and face a cancer threat that is 10 to 100 times greater than the level deemed significant by the state law.
Diesel Exhaust Threat Cited
The lawsuits follow a decision by a state panel of scientists that diesel exhaust poses a major risk of lung cancer. Last week, the Air Resources Board’s science advisors recommended after nine years of review that diesel exhaust be declared a toxic air pollutant.
UCLA toxicologist John Froines, who chairs the panel, called diesel exhaust “without a doubt the most toxic set of constituents that you could ever find.”
Diesel exhaust contains more than 40 compounds that are linked to cancer, including benzene and dioxins. Especially dangerous, health experts say, is the large volume of fine particles that can lodge in lungs and trigger respiratory problems such as asthma.
Each year, diesel trucks, buses and other engines in California spew 27,000 tons of soot-like particles, which hang in the air for about 10 days. They also emit about 450,000 tons a year of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons--which form the photochemical smog that blankets the Los Angeles Basin.
Some of the companies expressed disappointment with the environmentalists’ lawsuit because they say that they are researching low-polluting trucks.
Because of concerns over air pollution in the Los Angeles region, Lucky Stores is considering an experiment with new dual-fuel trucks that run on natural gas and diesel.
Decker said Lucky, which operates 430 trucks at its Buena Park facility, hopes to start with one truck, then expand to 25, which she said would be “the largest private fleet of [heavy-duty] liquid natural gas vehicles in the state.”
The trucks are “untested and unproven” for heavy loads, and the engines may not be efficient enough for the supermarkets’ cargo, Decker said.
Ralphs, the largest supermarket in Southern California, also is seeking lower-polluting alternatives. The company plans to install systems on some of its diesel engines that cut some emissions.
Raley’s Groceries, a Northern California chain that has a reputation for starting environmental trends in the business, has eight natural gas trucks, about 20% of its fleet.
The environmentalists said they hope to work out an agreement with the four companies so that they can drop the lawsuits.
“We’re asking the companies to buy clean trucks tomorrow and begin a five-to-10-year transition to a complete clean fuel fleet,” said Linda Waade of the Coalition for Clean Air.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
Targets of Suit
State officials and environmental activists say people living in the vicinity of major grocery distribution centers are at heightened risk of cancer because of exhaust from diesel trucks. The state has sued the owners of four distribution centers in Southern California and a fifth in Northern California.
Source: State attorney general’s office
