Residents Blame Mine for Emptying Idyllic Community

A tiny community deep in Los Padres National Forest seems like the perfect haven for the urban weary. Blaze-yellow cottonwoods and cobalt blue skies shout autumn while rows of mountain ridges keep street gangs and traffic a safe distance away.

Folks moved here for the quality of life. But now some of them are moving out. Rural homes on Lockwood Valley Road stand vacant and many others are posted with for-sale signs. Many residents here say they can no longer tolerate the strip mine next door.

Susan Norfleet Lee and Kristi Mordica used to live next door to the mine, but they closed their horse ranch and moved out last month. They said their lives were made miserable by dust and fumes from the mine. A physician, said Mordica, examined her and noted that her body exuded diesel odors, gave her injections to aid her breathing and then alerted Ventura County health officials.

“I had chronic headaches, couldn’t breathe and was coughing up brownish stuff. I just couldn’t take it anymore,” Mordica said.

Rick Thanstrom, a sheriff’s deputy, who moved his family into the community on the county’s north rim to escape city crime and pollution, has also left the area. He said emissions from the mine so sickened his wife and two children that they were forced to abandon the property in August.

“You ever been at an intersection in downtown L.A. during traffic, standing on a corner and had a big bus blow exhaust right into your face? Take that, multiply it by 10, put your head in a bag, and that’s what it’s like living next to the mine,” Thanstrom said.

And so the stories go at many of the dozen or so households in this part of Lockwood Valley, 20 miles north of Ojai. There is 58-year-old Edward Gertner who said he nearly gagged planting 1,300 trees to protect his 20 acres from noise and dust. Jerry Piesch prefers to stay inside his sweltering machine shop rather than go outside and breathe the air. Arnold “Dean” Swan said friends are so revolted by the odors they don’t come to visit anymore.

Open Long Before Suburbanites Came

At the heart of the dispute is the 400-acre mine near Seymour Creek operated by Glendale-based Pacific Custom Materials Inc. Old-timers still call the mine Ridgelite. It has been operating at various levels of capacity since 1948--long before suburbanites fleeing the big city discovered Lockwood Valley. Residents say that when they purchased their homes several years ago, the mine, under different ownership, seldom operated and caused few disturbances. Today, they regret their decision to put down roots there. “Look, we’re not activists,” Norfleet Lee said. “This is just like [the movie] ‘A Civil Action,’ but with stupid people.”

Dallas-based Texas Industries Inc., one of the nation’s biggest suppliers of building materials, bought Pacific Custom Materials in 1996 and has run the mine ever since.

The mine employs 50 people who dig clay from a quarry and burn it inside two kilns to produce 250,000 cubic yards of aggregate product annually for use in skid-resistant highway surfaces, fireproof roof tiles and lightweight concrete. Some of the product was used at Dodger Stadium and the Getty Center.

Production has recently increased at the mine, still run by Pacific Materials, which is now a subsidiary of Texas Industries, to supply a surging construction industry, boosting the parent company’s sales for aggregate products by 48% to record levels this year and contributing substantially to its $1.1 billion in annual sales, according to documents the company filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Texas Industries is seeking permission from the U.S. Forest Service to open 23 new mining claims on 460 acres of federal lands in and around the Sespe Wilderness Area, a plan that has drawn fire from Ventura County environmental groups.

George Eure, a vice president at Texas Industries, said the company anticipates more production from the Lockwood Valley plant in coming years, but added that the mine does not pose a pollution problem for the community. Numerous steps have been taken in recent years, company officials say, to reduce emissions, including keeping hauling roads moist and spraying water on material piles to cut dust. Bag houses and filters, among other devices, are in place to capture dust and fumes, too.

“Our business is to run our facility in compliance with all rules and regulations established by Ventura County and the state of California, and we are in compliance,” said plant manager Will Rickman. “We want to be good neighbors. By being in compliance, we are doing what we think we need to do to be good neighbors.”

Mine Hasn’t Always Been in Compliance

But to many neighbors near the plant, that is not good enough. Although the mine appears to be in compliance now, that has not always been the case, according to government officials.

Pacific Custom Materials ranks among Ventura County’s most polluting companies, emitting about 180 tons of smog-forming emissions each year, according to the county Air Pollution Control District. Clay is mixed with up to 3.2 million gallons of diesel fuel annually--an average of nearly 400 gallons per hour--and burned in two kilns. No other plant in Southern California consumes more diesel fuel, according to air quality officials.

Studies have linked diesel pollution to asthma attacks, allergies, lung cancer, deaths from heart and respiratory disorders and weakened lungs unable to fend off infections. Children are especially vulnerable and so are workers exposed to the emissions. Consequently, state air quality officials declared diesel pollutants a cancer-causing substance last year.

Tina Haller-Wade, a physician at Frazier Mountain Community Health Center, said patients from Lockwood Valley come to her clinic complaining of illnesses ranging from rashes to wheezing to fatigue they believe is caused by pollution from the mine. It’s not enough to prove the plant caused the illnesses, but it is enough to cause her to report the situation to Ventura County authorities.

“I’ve seen probably less than six cases. Those complaints need to be investigated,” Haller-Wade said.

Despite the pollution from the mine, state and local regulators say the company, for the most part, abides by the rules.

“They work with dirt. It’s going to create dusty conditions,” said Keith Duval, compliance division manager for the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District. “From what we’ve observed recently, it’s in compliance. There is no demonstrating that operating within their permit conditions is creating the problem. They appear to be going the extra step to try to take care of their emissions.”

Officials acknowledge, however, that gaps exist in the regulatory shield designed to protect people from air pollution and noise at the mine.

Duval acknowledges, for example, that the mine is so remote it is difficult for inspectors to verify complaints. When they do go to the mine, inspectors usually notify the mine in advance. They look at dust differently, too, using angles of sunshine prescribed by law that make haze look less opaque than what residents typically see. And generally, a nuisance violation isn’t triggered until the agency receives about a dozen simultaneous complaints, a threshold difficult to achieve in such a small community, he said.

The air district also decided not to designate the mine as a toxic hot spot, but that determination was made five years ago before Texas Industries ran the mine and increased production. Such a designation would precipitate health warnings to the community and perhaps new regulations, according to air quality officials.

Old Permits Still Govern

Patrick Richards, manager for the commercial and industrial land-use section of the county planning division, described similar limitations in the mine’s conditional use permit, which was issued in 1953. It contains few conditions governing the day-to-day operations at the mine, he said, and the company is out of compliance with at least one provision governing the location of ponds that hold cooling water. He said he hopes to complete a revised permit for the mine by January.

“This is a very, very old one and there were not many rules and regulations back then, so it’s hard to say it’s out of compliance,” Richards said. “It doesn’t have all the conditions that we would put in place for a mine today. These are minimum standards and we want them to get more in line with today’s standards.”

Government documents reveal a checkered compliance history at the mine. It has been cited for air pollution violations six times in the past 10 years. Those included violations in August 1996 and July 1997 for excessive emissions that resulted in fines totaling $4,000, according to records at the air district.

In response to citizen complaints, the plant has come under increasing scrutiny from authorities. Among the agencies that have probed the operation in the past six months are the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, the county Environmental Health Division, the air district, the U.S. Forest Service and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Supervisor Kathy Long, whose district includes Lockwood Valley, said she has directed the county’s health officer, environmental health director and planning division to conduct a full inquiry on problems reported at the mine. She said conversations with residents and film footage she viewed of dust clouds enveloping the community suggest that the county’s enforcement efforts to date have been lacking.

“I can’t believe we have pictures of all the dust, horses losing hair on their back, people having sudden health conditions they never had before; it’s too much coincidence,” Long said. “We need a full sweep on this and look at everything going on at that plant. I question if the review has been as thorough as it needs to be. Frankly, I don’t know that their operation is following the guidelines of today’s environmental laws.”

But opponents of Pacific Custom Materials are skeptical. They question whether the county is willing to get tough with a company that contributes so much to the local economy. Pacific Custom Materials estimates its annual contribution to the region that includes Ventura County to be $6.5 million, which includes money spent on items ranging from payroll to uniforms for Lockwood Valley baseball teams to $37,000 in property taxes paid to the county this year.

“The county has always indicated those kinds of businesses that provide those basic building materials to the area are needed,” Richards said. “But that doesn’t give business the right to do something to threaten public health or cause nuisances.”