South LA youth, non-profits sue city over neighborhood oil drilling



At its closest point, the Jefferson drill site is only three feet from homes. | Caitlyn Hynes, Intersections South L.A.

A few blocks west of the University of Southern California, behind ivy-covered walls, is the Jefferson oil-drilling site. The walls may block neighbors from seeing what goes on behind them, but they know, nonetheless.

Now, South Los Angeles youth, tired of living near toxic chemicals with little protection, are joining together with environmental non-profits to sue the city.

The Jefferson drilling site, owned and operated by Freeport-McMoran Inc., is one of the sites named in a lawsuit brought against the city. Located in the heart of a South Los Angeles neighborhood, the site is protected only by a retaining wall that neighbors say does little to contain the noise and odors produced by drilling. Other South L.A. sites face similar problems.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, Communities for a Better Environment, and the Center for Biological Diversity, held a press conference last Friday to announce the case. The groups allege that the city has not only violated regulations from the California Environmental Quality Act by issuing exemptions for environmental impact reports on oil drilling and production sites, but that it has also forced residents of color to bear disproportionate environmental and health burdens because of the lack of safety measures around several South Los Angeles sites.

Standing outside City Hall Friday with signs with that read, “Our health is not for sale” and, “Ain’t no power like the power of youth,” the minors stood behind speakers who demanded that the city comply with the California Environmental Quality Act by conducting environmental impact reports and providing better protection from, odors, toxins and noise pollution at the drilling sites.

“Our health and our environment are at risk. Community members should not have to jeopardize their health by simply being at home,” high school student Joshua Navarro told the press.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of an October audit that found that since 2007, most Los Angeles oil sites have not been subjected to an environmental impact report assessing the site’s health and environmental impacts on surrounding communities.

Reports from Al-Jazeera America found that the Jefferson drilling location is one of the sites lacking such documentation.  It is currently unclear why these oversights have continued.

Protests and this lawsuit against oil companies have drawn the support of youth who live in the neighborhoods surrounding the Jefferson drill site. Many of the kids involved have lived around the site for years. They’ve smelled the chemicals and heard the loud sounds that often accompany drilling.

Elena Hume, 10, has been involved with several protests. She said she and her family would smell the chemicals as they went on walks around their neighborhood.

“I never knew it was an oil-drilling site. We’d see the bushes, and the rows of trees, and the big yellow gate,” Hume said. But now she knows what is happening and she feels it’s wrong to expose her neighborhood to the fumes of the toxic chemicals.

Jordan Parks, 12, has lived near the site his entire life. For a long time he and his family didn’t know exactly what was behind the walls. But when his father discovered it was an oil-drilling site, “Everyone started realizing how incredibly bad it was,” Jordan said.

Youth from the neighborhood around the Jefferson site, brought together by school, church and neighborhood tutoring programs, have become more involved in the issue through protests at the drilling site over the past few years.

Richard Parks, Jordan’s father, said that the kids were the ones who wanted to take action. He said the youth wanted to initiate the process because their homes and families were being directly affected.

A report from the National Resources Defense Council found that the chemicals used at oil drilling sites have been linked to cancer and other reproductive health problems. Neighbors have also blamed the site for headaches, nosebleeds and asthma.

Tanja Srebotnjak, a professor at Harvey Mudd College who has worked in oil and gas research for over fifteen years, said that the closer neighbors are to the chemicals used at oil drilling sites, the more susceptible they are to health complications.

“Farther is better and some states and municipalities have set distances ranging…up to 1,500 feet, 2,000 feet,” Srebotnjak said.

But a 2014 Community Health Councils study found that South L.A. drilling sites located in neighborhoods with high percentages of people of color were significantly closer to homes, schools and churches than sites in West L.A.

While the average distance from homes, schools and churches in South L.A. is 85 feet, the West L.A. and Wilshire sites, located in primarily white neighborhoods, are about 400 feet away.

Many West L.A. sites also have enclosed structures or some type of geographic barrier like a golf course that can help mitigate noise and odors. The Jefferson site, in contrast, has only a retaining wall as physical protection.

Niki Wong of Redeemer Community Partnership, a South L.A. non-profit that works in the neighborhood around the Jefferson drill site, estimated that the wells at the site are a mere 60 feet from homes, a distance that almost certainly exposes residents to toxins. Without an environmental impact report, it is hard to know exactly how the community would be affected if an explosion or other accident were to happen on the site.

Wong said that it is key to involve the youth of the neighborhood in this effort. “It’s important for them [to recognize] the need for a healthy and safe environment to grow up in.”

As for the kids around the Jefferson drill site, they say they just want their neighborhood to be safe for families. “It’d be nice if they just shut [the drilling site] down and turned it into a park or something, or more housing,” said Jordan.

The city attorney’s office told the Los Angeles Times that it will review the lawsuit.

 

New UCLA Study Maps Toxic Factory Locations, Including South LA + LAPD Detective Removed from Duty After Racially Charged Remarks



 

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KCET: A team of UCLA researchers tracked the over 8 million pounds of toxic spew in LA county; check out the map for yourself here.

LA Times: Police officials are investigating a veteran detective’s alleged comments about shooting black men during a training lecture.

InsightNews:  South LA native Ice Cube talks to InsightNews about his upcoming movie “22 Jump Street” and his work with NWA.

LA Times: GOP gubernatorial hopeful Neel Kashkari brings his message to Living Gospel Church to talk about unemployment, education, and poverty.

NBC: Crenshaw businesses are feeling the squeeze as construction of the LAX light rail extension will continue for another six weeks.

Community celebrates contaminating plant closure



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Councilwoman Jan Perry today joined local residents and members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) in a press conference to celebrate the imminent closure of Palace Plating, the chrome plating facility that City officials found responsible for releasing toxic chemicals into the environment surrounding 28th Street Elementary School.

“It’s an industrial use facility that was grandfathered in, that never should’ve been grandfathered in an area where people are actually living or going to school,” says Perry. “We had a cancer cluster here. They were putting people’s health at risk.”

imageMartha Sánchez, middle, with her children, Gonzalo and Catherine Romero.

That’s what Martha Sánchez set out to prove eight years ago, when her children, who were attending 28th Street Elementary School, right across the street from the plant, started getting sick. Parents complained to health officials, city inspectors and their elected officials. Finally, they took their case to court.

It was a lengthy and difficult battle, but now parents, teachers and students are relieved that a judge ordered Palace Plating, which has been in the area for over 40 years, to permanently shut down by December 31.

“We have to change the way companies like this one operate,” declares Martha. “About ten teachers have died from cancer in the past few years.” Among them she points out Adrian Guillén, who died from pancreatic and Leticia Herrera, from lung cancer.

“We should change the cancer awareness pink ribbon to green – so people start using green technology and not allow for companies to use cancer causing toxic chemicals.”

Two of Martha’s children, Gonzalo, 17 and Catherine, 12, were among the 28th Street Elementary students who suffered from the air and ground contamination.

“I would get sick really easily. My nose was bleeding every night and I would vomit almost every day,” remembers Catherine.

Her brother Gonzalo, who says he also experienced a series of health problems, beams with pride about his mom’s accomplishment. “She’s awesome. She’s my role model. She’s an example that if you fight for a cause, anything’s possible.”image

Sánchez is relieved the plant’s closing, but she’s still concerned for her children’s health. “They’re healthy now, but I’m worried about their health in the future. After all, they were exposed to the chemicals.”

Among the hazardous chemicals being released by the plant: chromium, which was found in the City’s sanitary sewer system, tetrachloroethylene, a cleaning solvent that was impacting the air quality in and around the 28th Street Elementary School, and cadmium and chromic acid.

In a settlement with the City of L.A. earlier this month, Palace Plating agreed to remediate all contamination, cease its business operations by December 31, 2011, remove all on-site hazardous waste and pay $750,000 to LAUSD in restitution for costs associated with contamination at the 28th Street Elementary School.

imageNow, Councilwoman Perry says, the community has to focus on the next phase of neighborhood improvements. “We’re building 550 units for rental and housing for sale, retail space and creating open green space. We’re going to transform this area forever.”

Just down the street, construction has recently finished on “The Crossings,” an affordable housing complex built by the Urban Housing Communities, which will have its grand opening in January.

Contaminating plant permanently closes in South LA



imagePalace Plating, the chrome plating facility responsible for releasing toxic chemicals into the environment surrounding 28th Street Elementary School, will permanently shut down by December 31, putting a six year-old lawsuit against the company to an end.

Under the terms of the settlement approved by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge on November 2, the company must remove all on-site hazardous waste within 90 days and pay the Los Angeles Unified School District $750,000 in restitution for the clean up as a result of contamination at the school.

This is a victory for Martha Sánchez, a community resident and parent of children who were attending 28th street elementary school at the time. The settlement means the end of an exhausting, eight-year battle against a facility she believes was harming her children and her community.

Many community members and even Sánchez’s own family told her that there was no way the lawsuit was going to win. So when she received the news of the settlement she says it felt “like it’s mission accomplished—yes, we did it. That makes me feel proud of the work.”

The fight began in 2003, when city officials held a community meeting informing residents that the plant was responsible for releasing chemicals that had been known to cause cancer.

Because Los Angeles is already polluted, Sánchez recalls residents were told that they were already exposed to these chemicals and that it was safe. But she says her children had been healthy until she moved to the area. That’s when they started experiencing health problems.

imageAt the community meeting where city officials informed Sánchez of the carcinogenic chemicals being released, she voiced her concerns. “When I put my kids in this school, they started complaining about a lot of things that I think are related to these chemicals.”

After this meeting, Sánchez began investigating Palace Plating’s effects on 28th Street Elementary School students. She began collecting evidence of student health problems. She interviewed teachers, who told her they were sending five or six students to the nurse every day with symptoms that could have been caused by the chemicals in the air. She would stand outside the elementary school and interview parents, documenting every symptom and case. She remembers that many of the children had headaches, bloody noses, vomiting, and rashes.

She remembers the awful air quality surrounding the school as she waited outside the building to pick up her children. “When they were operating, all the gasses came to you, as if you were waiting in a car shop. All the mist came to you, and you started feeling itchy and burning and in a few minutes you were only full of rashes… And it was every single day. It was really really terrible.”

imageSánchez says she took the evidence she collected to the health department and other city agencies asking them to start an investigation. She says they told her the evidence she produced was not reliable and she didn’t have the legal authority to make the claims. That’s when Sánchez began to contemplate legal action.

“This is evidence, and if you do not take the responsibility to look at my evidence, you are perpetrating a problem, and I’m going to do something legal to force you to do so,” recalls Sánchez, explaining her run-in with the health department.

In 2006, city inspectors found chromium, one of the chemicals produced by the plant, was being released into the City’s sanitary sewer system. They also discovered that cleaning solvent tetrachloroethylene, originating from underneath the plant, was impacting the air quality in and around the 28th Street Elementary School, and that there were hazardous levels of cadmium and chromic acid on the property.

Chromium can cause a series of health problems including nosebleeds, bronchitis, kidney and liver damage, asthma, dermatitis, and lung cancer.

imageFeeling they had run out of options, Sánchez, about 50 families, and over a dozen teachers eventually filed a lawsuit against the school.

“I could scream as much I can, I could protest as much as I can, I could bring people to community action. I found out there was no other way than facing a lawsuit—civil action,” says Sánchez.

She’s glad the legal action is over. “It made me feel happy. Finally I’m screaming and laughing now. Finally, because I still can’t believe it.”

LAUSD has plans to develop a new playground for the children in the area, and soon, new affordable housing will transform the strip of land. Sánchez hopes the new apartments and renovations already being constructed down the block will help build a better community.

In the meantime, she’s thankful for the lessons and memories her children were able to experience as part of this movement.

“They became part of the lawsuit that changed a poor community… So that’s my inspiration. I have to pass the torch to the next generation.”