AQMD seeks changes at Rainbow waste management facility

The South Coast Air Quality Management District filed a petition Tuesday with its hearing board proposing the agency require several changes at a Huntington Beach waste management facility’s operations.

The regional air quality regulation board worked with a lawyer from Rainbow Environmental Services to come up with changes that would address concerns about dust, odors and other nuisances that have resulted in 10 notices of violations since November 2013.

The proposals include enclosing a majority of the business’s operations, installing a misting system to address odor issues, limiting its daily accepted tonnage to no more than 2,000 tons of municipal waste and cleaning its tipping floor of trash at the end of each day, according to the petition.

A public hearing about the proposed changes is scheduled for Oct. 21 at the AQMD’s headquarters in Diamond Bar. However, the meeting is likely to be moved to Huntington Beach at yet to be determined date, AQMD spokesman Sam Atwood said Thursday.

Rainbow, which is located in the Oak View neighborhood of Huntington Beach on Nichols Lane near Warner Avenue, has agreed on the initial suggestions made by the agency, Atwood said.

Oak View is a low-income, largely-Latino neighborhood.

“We felt that it was important and necessary to go to the hearing board to try to get an order for abatement so that Rainbow would be committed to taking very specific steps on a specified timeline for reducing the potential for these foul odors in the future,” Atwood said.

Rainbow announced to the Huntington Beach City Council in May that it would enclose its operations with a proposed 90,000-square-foot building on the company’s 17.6-acre property and that it would be completed by the end of 2018.

However, in the petition, the AQMD proposed that the business complete its suggested changes by Dec. 1, 2017.

“Rainbow is a good neighbor so while not yet approved, Rainbow is moving forward with the enclosures as proposed by AQMD,” Rainbow spokeswoman Sue Gordon wrote in an email Thursday. “We are determined to meet the Dec. 1, 2017 deadline.”

Officials with the Ocean View School District, which has an elementary school and pre-school across the street from Rainbow, said they were pleased that the AQMD has taken the step to make Rainbow comply with its regulations, but believe the initial proposal does not do enough abatement.

“We are very pleased that AQMD has shown compassion and concern for the plight of the students, teachers and residents of Oak View, but we think there is a bit more work to be done,” said Edmond Connor, an attorney representing the school district. “The order contains absolutely no details about how this is all going to be accomplished…. The devil is in the details.”

Connor said he would like to see Rainbow’s operations be stopped while it is being brought up to compliance to AQMD code, should the hearing board approve the changes.

“We’re looking at over two years of still being subjected to 2,000 tons per day of garbage coming in and being processed across the street,” he said. “It’s not going to be covered. They’ve put in some interim mitigation, which we definitely appreciate, but it’s not going to be the end-all and be-all and our kids and teachers are looking to suffer for another two years.”