Jewelers, City Question State Action

When state regulators moved to close down a Los Angeles jewelry manufacturing center recently, they stunned not only business owners in the thriving downtown district but also local government officials, who had been working for nearly two years to get the industry to voluntarily improve safety conditions.

The jewelry makers complain that they were blindsided by the state action after working with Los Angeles city building and fire officials to improve their operations. The business owners fear those actions could be for naught if state Environmental Protection Agency officials move aggressively to close other jewelry manufacturers.

But state regulators say they are just doing their job--responding to health complaints and protecting the well-being of low-wage workers who perform much of the painstaking work in the aging buildings.

To manufacturers, it’s a case of the government showing two faces. And they have at least one defender in the state government. “It’s lawyers versus policymakers,” said Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, who represents the jewelry district.

Cedillo has called for a meeting with Cal/EPA officials and hopes to resolve the issue in a way that will address the state’s safety concerns, but not threaten the future of an industry that has brought vitality to a blighted part of downtown.

The controversy began in June, when the state ordered a halt to jewelry manufacturing at the Park Central Building at 412 W. 6th St. The EPA officials focused on air quality problems and potentially hazardous levels of cadmium, copper, chromium, lead, nickel, silver and zinc.

The shutdown was ordered by the attorney general’s office, which is considering filing a lawsuit, at Cal/EPA’s request, against the building’s owners.

The action prompted them to say they may move out, and neighboring business owners have expressed fears that they will be targeted next--potentially shutting down the entire industry in Los Angeles.

Owners of the businesses say they are particularly disturbed because they have been working for months to improve safety conditions. David Keim, chief of the Code Enforcement Bureau for the city of Los Angeles, said the city has devoted nearly two years to identifying chronic problems with code violations in the jewelry district, and has negotiated new safety guidelines with industry leaders.

Guidelines Recently Submitted to State

The guidelines are almost completed, Keim said, and target such problems as inadequate ventilation and potentially hazardous storage of materials such as cyanide in some jewelry-making businesses.

Now, jewelers who said they were doing their best to cooperate with regulators say they feel struck out of the blue by another, unseen arm of government.

“We went through a year of discussions and arguments,” said Peklar A. Pilavjian, head of the Armenian Jewelers Assn. “We finally came up with the ‘Holy Bible,’ so to speak, only to suddenly find out that it’s not the real thing.”

Pilavjian said that business owners who were about to buy new ventilation systems to comply with the proposed guidelines are now hesitant to do so because they are afraid Cal/EPA won’t approve.

City officials have now submitted their proposed guidelines to their counterparts in Cal/EPA. “Honestly,” said Keim, “we would be hard-pressed to impose these guidelines and cause the building owners to spend a lot of money if another agency is going to come and say they can’t do this at all.”

Cedillo said he has been impressed by the owners’ efforts. “What’s interesting here is that you see a sincere intent from industry to come into compliance. They just want to know with whom.”

Ron Baker, public information for the state Department of Toxic Substance Control, said his agency first began testing for hazards at the Park Central Building in August 1999.

Other tests followed, including some last spring--the same period in which city officials were presenting the proposed safety guidelines to jewelry business owners.

By June, the state environmental officials had concluded that there were potential hazards as a result of airborne particles.

City officials knew that the state had been looking into air quality problems many months ago, “but we didn’t know it was going to amount to so much,” Keim said. He added that the order against the Park Central operations “was as much a surprise to us as anyone else.”

Keim said he doesn’t fault state regulators for enforcing the law as their procedures require, but “you have multiple agencies here. . . . Could communication be better? You bet.”

Baker, however, was not apologetic for the state’s enforcement action, which he said was needed to protect public safety. “We are a regulatory agency,” he said. “We receive a complaint, we are required by law to respond to that complaint.”

Baker said that while city officials attend to fire and structural safety, his agency focuses on air quality and other issues.

Al Hernandez, assistant city fire marshal, said that the efforts to meet with industry had come about because fire inspectors had frequently found problems with jewelry manufacturers and were concerned about such practices as storing crystallized cyanide in plastic containers.

Hernandez said the state regulators are focused on enforcement, and the city more with collaborative solutions. The two entities simply were operating on different tracks, he said. But he hopes the agreement with the jewelers can be salvaged.

“We have an agreement by consensus with the building owners. That’s a first,” Hernandez said. “We usually have to fight people to get them to change.”