Metal Shop Near School Faces Pollution Charges

Los Angeles city prosecutors filed environmental charges Thursday against a chrome-plating shop next to an elementary school near downtown, where teachers and parents have long complained of respiratory illnesses and other health problems.

The action against Palace Plating, a metal finisher across the street from 28th Street School, is part of what City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo said was a crackdown on industries that pollute poor and minority neighborhoods. “We’re going to communities where we see what appears to be a saturation of these uses and taking action,” he said. “If something like this happened in a wealthier community, they would hire hordes of lawyers and deal with this on their own. In communities like Pacoima and Wilmington, people don’t have the ability to do that.”

The chrome-plating industry is a particular target of a new unit of attorneys focusing on what Delgadillo and Luis Li, the chief of the city attorney’s criminal branch, describe as “environmental justice” issues.

The complaint against Palace Plating filed in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that the metal shop has illegally dumped chromium, cadmium and other potentially hazardous metals into the ground and has violated fire and building codes. The charges could result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Representatives of Palace Plating did not return calls Thursday requesting comment. The city charged the business and its chief executive, Clifford R. Pierce Jr.

Politicians, including new Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Councilwoman Jan Perry, have criticized the metal shop in response to protests from parents and teachers at the public school, whose 2,150-student body is 98% Latino. “As far as I am concerned, these plating activities have no place near a school or a person’s place of residence,” Perry said.

Some parents who had organized against the metal shop in recent months said they welcomed the city charges, but stressed that only the permanent closing of Palace Plating would satisfy them.

“To me, as a mother, whatever Rocky Delgadillo does is fine, but we need to shut this place down and get something good for the community,” said Martha Sanchez, a parent who has led opposition to Palace Plating as a chapter leader for the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now. “Too many people around here are getting sick.”

The school was built in 1895. The metal shop was allowed to locate nearby in 1941 -- an example of what environmental justice advocates call a pattern of bad land-use decisions made decades ago by Los Angeles officials that still expose residents to industrial pollution in many of the city’s less affluent areas.

“In some cases, companies are just not able to operate safely near schools,” said Scott Kuhn, legal director of the group Communities for a Better Environment. “It sounds like things are coming together to put pressure” on Palace Plating, he said. “If they can’t operate safely, they probably shouldn’t be there.”