From – Herald Examiner (July 7, 1989)

Title – “The Armageddon in our backyard”

L.A.’s quick-fix approach to disposing of hazardous wastes is leading us toward an ecological Armageddon – in the poorest communities. Consider the proposed hazardous waste incinerator in Vernon.

They city is surrounded by one of the most densely populated areas in the county – East L.A. In Vernon itself, however, there are 90 residents.

That’s because the city was built for industry. Leslie Salt, Oscar Mayer, Farmer John, Vienna Hot Dogs and 7 Up/RC Cola all have warehouses or food-packaging plants there. Many lesser known companies have manufacturing facilities.

There are few restrictions on business operations in Vernon. That probably helps explain why the city was the county’s leading polluter in 1987, disgorging 27 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, land and sewers. The city of Los Angeles discharged 3 ½ times less.

Choosing Vernon as the site of a $29 million commercial hazardous-waste incinerator, the first of its kind in a major metropolitan area, should have set off alarm bells. For starters, building a plant capable of burning 22,500 tons of hazardous wastes annually in a city that is already a notorious polluter borders on the bizarre. Furthermore, these materials will have to be trucked into Vernon on some of the most congested freeways in the world, and accidents are bound to happen.

Yet, state and federal regulatory agencies didn’t even exercise minimal caution. In 1987, both the Southern California Air Quality Management District and the state Department of Health Services declared that the incinerator would have no significant impact on the surrounding environment. Thus, California Thermal Treatment Services, the plant owner, wasn’t required to file an Environmental Impact Report.

The Vernon incinerator would be belching pollutants today had Assemblywoman Lucile Roybal-Allard not told the Mothers of East Los Angeles about the proposal. The Mothers, already fighting to block plans to build a downtown prison and an above-ground oil pipeline from Santa Barbara to Long Beach that would have conspicuously circumvented Santa Monica, were outraged at the prospect of having 125,000 pounds of toxic waste burned daily in their backyards. So they took to the streets.

In December 1987, the Mothers led 500 community folks into a Department of Health Services hearing to demand an EIR. The department temporarily relented. But several months later, it caved in to pressure from California Thermal. New safety tests, Health Services claimed, showed the incinerator wouldn’t be a threat to the community or to the environment, so no EIR was necessary.

In early 1988, after two toxic-chemical accidents on the East Side forced the evacuation of thousands of residents and the Mothers got the attention of some the state’s highest political officials, the AQMD refused to extend California Thermal’s incinerator permits unless an EIR was conducted by an independent contractor. The district additionally required a new assessment of the health-risk factor posed by the plant. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency issued the company the Vernon permits without an EIR.

California Thermal successfully took the AQMD to court. Superior Court Judge Kurt Lewin ordered the district to issue the permits without a full EIR. Said Lewin, “Construction of such facilities cannot be postponed indefinitely, nor can they be continuously relocated to someone else’s bailiwick.”

Lewin then insulted the Latino community. The incinerator, said the judge, was like the Mexican pyramids: It represented progress. (The pyramids, it should be noted, were often built by forced labor.) The AQMD is appealing Lewin’s ruling.

The events surrounding the proposed hazardous-waste incinerator in Vernon are best understood in the context of a 1987 study by the United Church of Christ’s Commission on Racial Justice. Titled “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States,” the report says that 15 million blacks and 8 million Latinos live in communities with one or more licensed toxic-waste sites. Interestingly, a 1984 report, prepared by Cerrell and Associates for the California Waste Management Board, advises government and industry to target “lower socioeconomic neighborhoods” for disposal sites.

So it was with the Vernon incinerator. But environmental racism, like other forms of racism, ultimately victimizes all of us – and may even kill us.