Lawmakers Focus on Pollution in Poor Areas

When the weather was hot in her La Puente neighborhood during the 1960s and 1970s, state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente) remembers the sweet stench coming off the nearby Puente Hills landfill.

State Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier) recalls the black freeway dust that settled on the laundry hanging from clotheslines in her East Los Angeles backyard. When her family moved to Huntington Park, she recalled, they endured the smell of animal rendering plants in nearby Vernon.

The memories partly explain why they and other lawmakers from working-class neighborhoods hope to elevate “environmental justice” alongside such long-standing issues as crime and education.

Environmental justice defines a wide range of efforts to counter what is believed to be a disproportionate number of waste sites, diesel traffic and polluting factories in poor neighborhoods, many with large numbers of Latinos or African Americans.

Where urban environmental concerns were previously championed, with little success, by a few African American leaders, the increasing political presence of Latinos in California is changing the environmental movement, said state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar).

“The fact that there are several of us now in the state leadership who come from these kinds of backgrounds is making environmental justice a priority concern,” Alarcon said during an environmental justice Senate select committee hearing Friday at the headquarters of the South Coast Air Quality Management District. He spent his childhood playing among the 35 dumps that surrounded his Sun Valley neighborhood.

Earlier this month, state lawmakers ended their session with a package of legislation that seeks new pollution limits in neighborhoods shared by residents and industry.

“It’s high time we level the playing field,” said Solis. She is the author of a bill that would make environmental justice concerns a guiding principle in future development in California. Whereas the issue received only scant support in the past, she said, “We have more advocates now, who can articulate how irritating it is to live in those conditions.”

Though the legislation is not as aggressive as many environmentalists would like (business groups withdrew their opposition after key bills in the package were amended), nearly all are expected to be signed by Gov. Gray Davis.

The bills are part of a larger movement to rethink regulation of polluted neighborhoods.

Recent Pledge by the AQMD

Recently, the AQMD pledged to regulate carcinogenic air pollutants, such as diesel exhaust and industrial solvents, as part of a 2-year-old environmental justice program spearheaded by Chairman William A. Burke, the agency’s first African American board member.

“This is an economic issue as much as it is an environmental issue,” said Burke, born 60 years ago in a room that sat on a city dump in Zanesville, Ohio.

“Black people were subject to environmental injustice long before other minority groups came along and took their place,” he said. “You’ve got to be motivated by the visceral, but the decision-making process has to be done by the science involved.”

Even the Sierra Club--criticized in the past for its seeming indifference to urban environments--has hired community organizers specializing in industrial neighborhoods.

“We intend to become more visible,” said Bill Craven, state director of the Sierra Club. Despite those recent developments, “I don’t think we’re even scratching the tip of the iceberg,” said Alarcon, a former AQMD member. He initiated the ongoing series of state Senate committee hearings on environmental justice earlier this year.

His select committee’s aim is to develop strategies to help working-class communities that are inundated with pollution problems, while still protecting jobs, Alarcon said.

Friday’s hearing drew state and federal environmental officials, business lobbyists and representatives of community groups.

The hearing grew heated at times, with Alarcon scolding environmentalists for ignoring the economic consequences of regulation while warning business groups that changes are imminent.

“California is already in the vanguard” when it comes to regulating businesses, said Curtis Coleman of the California Manufacturing Assn.

“That’s because we have the worst air,” Alarcon countered. Historically, local and state officials have either permitted industries near densely populated areas or ignored health risks created when neighborhoods sprouted around previously isolated factories, Solis said.

“Our communities have been the dumping ground for industry for too long,” she said.

Her San Gabriel Valley district is home to eight landfills, a federal Superfund toxic waste cleanup site and scores of mines and factories, many near schools and churches.

Bill Would Involve Local Government

Solis’ bill directs the state Office of Planning and Research to consult with municipalities on development decisions in industry-saturated areas.

The original version of Solis’ bill, which Wilson vetoed last year, required environmental justice concerns to be included in the mandatory environmental review process of new development projects. Businesses and developers argued it would be too burdensome.

The final version, brokered by Davis aides, only recommends that environmental justice be considered in local planning decisions.

“It’s a step in the right direction, but a baby step at best,” said Carlos Porras, regional director of a statewide group called Communities for a Better Environment.

Environmentalists, however, lauded two bills by Escutia, who represents Southeast Los Angeles and parts of the San Gabriel Valley.

Escutia’s Children’s Environmental Health Protection Act changes the standards of acceptable community health risk that industries must consider when evaluating their emissions.

Currently, pollution standards are based on a healthy adult male’s susceptibility to cancer. Escutia’s bill would have businesses instead consider the cancer risks for children.

Along with Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), she drafted legislation that increases environmental reviews required before school sites are approved.

The environment, she said, “shouldn’t be limited to coastline issues and preservation of extinct species. We are entitled to the same quality of life as people in Santa Monica or Beverly Hills.”

Brian White, a director at the California Chamber of Commerce, said the state must strike a balance between industrial and environmental concerns.

Costly new regulations may lead to a loss of jobs, he said. “In order to have a safe environment, you have to have a strong economy. Otherwise, you won’t have the resources you need to protect the environment.”

Alarcon said his select committee is mindful of such concerns.

“The same communities that suffer from environmental degradation are likely to be negatively impacted when factories shut down,” he said.

But, he added, “What we haven’t seen yet in California is an overarching comprehensive view of environmental justice.”