The reports were scooping up data from a new generation of monitors deployed by Nastri’s agency, tasked with keeping the air clean from the beaches stretching from Santa Monica to Dana Point and inland to Palm Springs.
Scattered on telephones polls in Paramount neighborhoods, the technology for the first time allowed regulators to track how pollution from industrial plants was traveling across the community.
And it added a disturbing perspective to the challenges facing the four-county South Coast Air Quality Management District, which had been darting from one pollution crisis to another for years.
The current multi-layered regulatory scheme involving the air district and other state and federal agencies was being hampered by monitoring and enforcement gaps that were increasing health risks for Southern California residents, especially for those in low-income communities near industrial areas.
“We need to do a much better job of reducing pollution in those areas and we need the resources to do it diligently,” Nastri said. “We are learning there are processes that weren’t fully understood.”
The Paramount discovery came after the AQMD and other agencies failed to prevent a battery plant in the manufacturing hub of Vernon from illegally leaking lead and acids into the community, eventually leading to a $176 million state cleanup.
Then the largest methane leak in U.S. history erupted in the San Fernando Valley that took months to contain.
AQMD regulators traced the Paramount releases of cancer-causing chromium-6 to two metal processing plants not far from homes. The district scrambled to shut down the operations, but it took weeks before the emissions were stopped.
Now, new expanded monitoring in the area has detected toxic hotspots elsewhere in the city.
Based on recent Paramount findings, Nastri is concerned there may be other undetected hazardous substance hotspots across the region, near chromium plating, recycling, metal work and other industrial facilities.
Coming up on his first year at the helm of the AQMD, Nastri has drawn criticism for championing a clean air strategy detractors say is soft on polluters.
But, after the drubbing regulators have taken in the Paramount case, he is proposing a sweeping anti-toxics plan that could put him at odds with industries already complaining about what they see as over regulation.
The strategy relies on expanded use of mobile air monitoring devices and installation of fence-line pollution detection technologies at businesses handling or producing toxic substances, a notable departure from past practices that relied almost exclusively on companies self-reporting their emissions after the fact.
The district is also backing legislation that would allow it to immediately shut down polluters that pose a health risk instead of having to wait to present its evidence to a hearing board. And it has stepped up communications with city officials often left in the dark about regulatory actions involving toxic emitters and releases in their areas.
California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Paramount resident, said he was happy the district was taking seriously a crisis that nearly arrived on his doorstep.
“There is a great sense of urgency to show that we are willing to do what is right by these communities that have been ignored for a long time or mistreated,” he said.
Paramount
Paramount became a textbook case of what was wrong with the system, one that critics and some officials now concede was focused broadly on regional air quality issues, too narrowly on industrial reporting compliance and not enough on health effects on communities.“The current regulatory approach has been to focus on individual facilities and limit the amount of pollution from the smoke stack,” said Angelo Bellomo, the Los Angeles County deputy director for health protection. “But we learned in Paramount is if it’s just the individual facilities, we could have hotspots in the community that go undetected.”
Part of the problem is that the air district doesn’t consistently monitor industrial communities for toxics, said Rachel Morello-Frosch professor of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and Public Health at UC Berkeley.
The district has long had about three dozen monitors spread across the region, but they chiefly measure ozone and other particulate matter, measuring progress in fighting smog.
Morello-French stressed air regulators aren’t routinely monitoring industrial areas for toxics such as hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6. Stepped up AQMD testing with new equipment is needed, but intensified enforcement is equally important, she added.
In Paramount the carcinogens might have never been detected if not for years of complaints by neighbors and activists about the smell of burning metal. Many of the companies in the city had obtained air permits for equipment and processes known to have harmful emissions, including chromium-6.
But resident complaints prompted an investigation of emissions from a company releasing chromium-6 and nickel.
Last year, the district deployed for the first time 10 newly acquired multi-metal monitors. The results led to two more companies linked to releases of hexavalent chromium reaching as much as 350 times above normal levels.
Inspectors found emissions from the businesses escaped from industrial processes that had never drawn the AQMD’s attention. One was a quenching bath that cooled metal products. Surprised officials ordered more monitoring and continue to track elevated levels of toxics at one of the plants that they have yet to trace to a source.
Disclosure of the findings sparked outrage in the community, dotted with metal processing factories, where families had lived near factories for years. The investigation also revealed a city business licensing system that allowed dozens of similar facilities to operate without determining if new required clean air permits had been obtained.
Regulators found 14 Paramount companies were operating polluting machinery illegally. A sampling of a half dozen cities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties by Southern California News Group found most had no mechanism to alert air district officials if a new industrial business is coming online. A few said they contact the air district when companies pull a building permit for a new facility, but most rely on businesses to self-report their operations to air regulators.
Nastri said he’s changing how his agency communicates with cities. The district is alerting cities when local companies violate air rules and will soon begin asking local governments to inform air regulators of businesses that need air district oversight.
“It’s an unprecedented effort,” said Jane Williams, executive director California Communities Against Toxics, one of those who harangued state agencies about Paramount pollution. Frustrated by what she saw as failed regulatory oversight, she began testing residents’ hair for metals a few years ago and used the high readings to bolster her argument about the severity of the problem.
Toxic hotspots such as those in Paramount are “something those in the environmental justice communities have been complaining about for more than a generation,” she said.
A new regime
Nastri is seeking $4 million to $7 million from the state legislature to expand the district’s inventory of pollution monitors that can detect chromium-6 and other toxics, along with support for expanded lab capabilities. And he wants to target about 1,200 facilities that fit a toxic profile similar to those facilities found in Paramount. He suspects some may be emitting toxic substances the district has missed.James F. Simonelli, executive director of California Metals Coalition said the industry welcomes more information, but is wary.
“I think we need to know what people are breathing,” he said. “The challenge is how do you discern this with all these sources (of potential pollution).”
Simonelli is echoing an argument Aerocraft Heat Treating Corp. made against the district. The Paramount company has been partially shut down four times in recent over the past months for releasing elevated levels of chromium-6 in violation of an order. The company disputes the regulators monitoring numbers.
“There needs to be a lot more collaboration between regulators, business and the community,” he said.”If industry has a solution we promote, we hope people look at it from an open mind.”
©2017 The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
