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Toxic Talk
I'll be blogging about the environment mostly, with a few fun topics thrown in.
Real Name: Sarah Ruby Gender: female Member Since: May 31, 2006 Last Signed In: September 18, 2006 Profile Views: 2223 Blog Views: 2508 Dispute persists over trees as polluter Junk cars Extreme heat and air The air, continued The air The big fish You asked for it... Confessions of a jaywalker Welcome to Toxic Talk with Sarah Ruby July 06 August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 
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You asked for it...
Okay, okay, so walking isn't the most urgent environmental issue out there. Here's a meatier story that ran a few weeks ago. It's long, I know, but if I linked to it you'd have to pay for it.
Toxic trails By Sarah Ruby and James Burger For decades, companies with questionable ethics made Kern County their home and piled up massive mounds of contaminated earth, toxic chemicals, oilfield sludges and heavy metals. And in some cases, the office paid by tax dollars to stop polluters -- Kern's Environmental Health Services Department -- stood by and let it happen. One company, Resource Renewal Technology Inc., made a business of dumping oily dirt, discarded concrete, pools of sludge and other lucrative junk for more than a decade. By 2002, when Kern County supervisors shut the company down, the waste cocktail near Maricopa had swelled with enough material to spread, one yard thick, across more than 30 football fields. Other waste piles around Kern have similar histories. * In 2005, neighbors discovered a vast moonscape of caustic ash at a sludge farm operated by USA Transport Inc. near Wasco. Their complaints triggered a state investigation, which later led the Kern Environmental Health Services Department to revoke the farm's permit. It is unknown how long the piles had been sitting there. * Another company, Environmental Protection Corporation, poured toxic waste into open pits half a mile from the Kern River in the 1970s and 1980s. Water under the site is still saturated with toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The Kern department could have jumped in if it felt the site was an immediate threat, but the company was primarily regulated by the state, which shut it down in 1986. * Each day thousands of Bakersfield commuters pass a huge toxic pile left by Gibson Environmental Inc. off Rosedale Highway. The pile might still be adorned with tanks full of hazardous waste if liquids hadn't leaked, prompting the state to launch an emergency cleanup in 1999 and 2000. The Kern department worked on the case, but the state took the lead. These dump sites and the county's lackadaisical handling of them have helped seal Kern's reputation as a waste dumper's dream come true. When the county or state does come to the rescue, dumpers often duck into bankruptcy, leaving the burden of cleanup on the public's shoulders. As a result, most of Kern's abandoned waste sites sit untouched until regulators track down where the junk came from and force those companies to take action. For example, Gibson Environmental's former customers paid some $8 million to remove immediate threats to the Kern River. Non-emergency cleanup was left for another day, and a contaminated pile still sits near Rosedale Highway. So why weren't these and other polluters stopped before piles became mountains? The reasons can be traced, at least in part, to the enforcement philosophy of Environmental Health Chief Steve McCalley, who retired March 31 after 17 years with the department. He took a gentle line with businesses -- a reflection of a community that doesn't want public employees "working here with a clipboard and an attitude," he said, paraphrasing former county supervisor Ben Austin. "Could we be more forceful? Yes," he said in an interview before leaving the job. "Is that something that's acceptable to the community? Perhaps not." In his view, the economic benefits of a friendly regulatory climate outweigh the damage caused by a few polluters unwilling to play fair. "It's a balancing act," he said. "Businesses employ the citizens of this community. We have an obligation to collaborate for the good of the community." Laws no help Weak state laws also contribute to Kern's dumping problem, especially when companies insist they are not waste handlers but "recyclers," exempting them from solid waste laws. Most of Kern's enduring dump sites were run by people who claimed to recycle waste into a usable product, and local officials were slow to reclassify them as polluters. Even today, county officials take most companies at their word for what they're doing. A recent example: the vast and possibly hazardous piles of ash allowed to gather at Oxnard's sludge farm near Wasco. The county put a list of conditions on the farm's permit, but regulators seldom check if those rules are being followed, said code enforcement and environmental health officials, who were answering to a dismayed board of supervisors April 4. "We do very little follow up with conditional use permits," Chuck Lackey, who oversees the county's code enforcement division, said at the meeting. Still, it's not all the fault of local agencies. The nearby coastal county of Ventura doesn't have Kern's dumping problem, but if it did, officials there might not be able to deal with it any better, said William Stratton, manager of Ventura County's environmental health division. Unless a dump site is an active health hazard, environmental health officials' powers are limited, he said. "They don't really have the tools that allow us to move very quickly and resolve these issues," Stratton said. "We have to go through a process and that process takes quite a bit of time." A tough crowd Some locals think Kern's environmental health department interprets its powers too narrowly. In some cases, the department spent years working with companies that had no intention of following the law. When their owners closed up and faded out of the public eye, the county was left with the mess -- piles full of heavy metals, refinery waste and contaminated soil. They're mostly in Kern's remote areas such as Maricopa and McKittrick, but some sit within a mile of the Kern River, a major source of drinking and agricultural water. The environmental health department's enforcement record is "a mess," said state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter. McCalley was "horrible" at protecting the environment if it meant crossing industry, he said. "It's safe to say the only time the department acts is two reasons: bad press and crisis. That's it," he said. Polluters have been known to get a pass here, said Deputy District Attorney John Mitchell, who handles environmental and consumer fraud cases. "If you get caught you are going to get a notice to comply or a stern lecture from (the environmental health department)," he said. "One of my colleagues in another county calls (this style) the 'pretty-please' method of law enforcement." In 2002, Mitchell sued the owners of Resource Renewal Technology, the company whose legacy sits in piles off Highway 166. That case settled a little more than a year ago. The company's owners paid $68,000 in fines. The site could cost $10 million to clean up. Mitchell was hoping to force Resource Renewal Technology to clean up its mess, but "unfortunately, by the time that we got the case the cleanup costs were in the millions and the defendants didn't have the ability to pay that amount," he wrote in an e-mail. Now the state Department of Toxic Substances Control is deciding if it should go after the company's former customers for cleanup costs. Early surface tests didn't show the site to be an imminent threat to health or groundwater, and while in-depth sampling would probably "get hazardous levels of something," the state is loathe to pay for a series of tests that can cost as much as $10,000 each, said Tom Kovac, who supervises hazardous cleanups for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. Judges typically need proof of a substantial threat before they force a company's customers -- in this case, school districts, PG&E and uniform cleaning services, among others -- to pay for cleanup, he said. Mitchell has nothing but praise for Kern's environmental health investigators, who have brought him "egregious, well-documented" cases in recent years. But unlike criminal cases, the decision of whether to refer a civil case for prosecution lies with the agency's leaders, he said, and Resource Renewal Technology is one that simmered for a decade before being sent to his office. The attitude in Kern is changing, Mitchell said, but there are "people who still believe in the old school and don't want to do anything (about polluters)." A case in point Environmental health investigators were wary of pursuing Resource Renewal Technology for its bad environmental behavior, county records show. The department opened and closed an investigation of the company in the early 1990s, and shortly thereafter it let the company keep its status as a recycler instead of calling it a waste handler, exempting it from further red tape. Resource Renewal Technology continued to pile up waste and enforcement once again came to a head in 2002. Brian Pitts, a lead investigator in the case, sent a note to his bosses asking for "reassurance" that they'd support him on a notice of violation against the company. He predicted a quick counterattack, which "doesn't bother me, but we have folks with weak knees around here," Pitts wrote. Pitts refused to discuss the memo and why he wrote it. Pitts would later take the case to the county planning commission and the board of supervisors, which rejected a venom-filled appeal by the company's owner, Calvin H. Cheek, Jr., to save his business. "We have given this gentleman way, way, way too much latitude, and I don't know who is responsible for it," said Supervisor Barbara Patrick at a board meeting October 8, 2002. "This should have come to us months, if not years ago." Supervisors revoked Cheek's permit, a move that closed the business but left the county with a pile of waste that will cost some $10 million to clean up. "In the final analysis, the taxpayers are going to have to pay for this and I think that's a travesty," said Patrick at the meeting. Patrick, who retires from office at the end of the year, said the county has learned lessons from its dealings with companies such as Resource Renewal Technology. It now requires businesses to put up money for unforeseen environmental cleanup costs. "Once burned, twice shy," Patrick said. "You don't have to be hit in the head by a two-by-four more than once (to learn a lesson) -- or you shouldn't have to be." The future The future of the Environmental Health Services Department is now in the hands of Matt Constantine, who was selected by county administrators in February to take over for McCalley. Constantine admits the department has made mistakes in how it's handled past cases. Given the information available today, he wishes the department had been more aggressive in shutting down Resource Renewal Technology, among other so-called recyclers. "I think you have found some areas (where) perhaps we could have done better," he said. "I'm hopeful you'll see some of our responses recently reflect a change." In the past five years, the department has gone after 18 landfills, trucking outfits and other companies for stockpiling solid waste or otherwise overstepping their permits. It's sent more than a dozen successful hazardous waste cases to the district attorney in that time, including one that yielded a $150,000 fine in 2005 for a trucking accident that released nitric acid from a tanker. In 2003, a department investigation led to a $1.2 million legal settlement from a company responsible for a release of hydrochloric acid into the air, and another investigation sent a man to jail in 2001 for releasing hazardous waste in a residential area. As for his predecessor, Constantine said McCalley has "done an amazing job," and described him as a mentor. He admires McCalley's enthusiasm and accessibility, his ability to maximize limited resources and his "rational, reasonable approach." "He's always here, he's always interested, he's always excited," said Constantine. "He's always accessible." Under McCalley's direction, Constantine ran the county's troubled Animal Control Services Division until late 2004. The two men were responsible for a policy by which animal shelter workers routinely violated state law -- knowingly delivering lethal injections to thousands of animals before the end of a mandated 96-hour holding period. Some county leaders hope Constantine will bring change to the environmental health department. "The philosophy has always been try to get the cooperation of the offending party. Sometimes I think we go a little too far ... we give them too much time," said Supervisor Don Maben. "We've got a new guy coming on board, and maybe he can give us a little more strength in that direction." Kern County is at a "crossroads," said Supervisor Michael Rubio. "I think we are certainly lax compared to other counties," he said. "You have to start asking the question, how did we get to where we are today?" Kern is a magnet for the hazardous waste industry, at least compared to its rural counterpart, Fresno County. Kern's environmental health department gave out 5,616 permits to hazardous waste handlers and generators in the past five years, and sent 15 investigations to the district attorney. Fresno gave out about half that many permits in that time, and didn't send any cases to the district attorney. Kern's unique position as a solid and hazardous waste destination make comparison to other counties difficult, said Constantine. Kern's proximity to the Los Angeles area, the second most populated metro area in the country, creates "a rather unique problem we face here," he said. Supervisor Ray Watson defends the department, saying it does a great job considering the number of facilities it regulates. The department has a careful approach, he said, but "when all the facts are in and there's a decision to be made, the decision will be made." Supervisor Jon McQuiston agrees, and says the environmental health department's job is to work with businesses and help them comply with the law. "We can either be a coach or an umpire," he said. "If all we are is scorekeeping and penalties, I think we're missing the point." 3 comments from 2 users
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posted by
anonymous
on Jul 19, 2006 at 12:10 PM
The County would rather work "with" a company to clean up a problem than to force them to comply. If you force them, they claim bankruptcy and close, leaving the County holding the bill. Work with them, and the company works at their own pace, taking months, years, sometimes decades to clean a site. Combine this with years of County departments running on shoestring budgets and now faced with staffing shortages (see Sunday's paper), and you realize that things won't be getting better for a while.
Kern has always been "business friendly", whether you are talking about polluting businesses or property developers or just about anything else. But the population has grown and grown up. Higher levels of education and incomes combined with greater awareness of the environment around them has woken the County up to the problems that have been created over the past decades of lax rules and enforcement. Instead of planning ahead (which would have cost money, time, and votes, three things politicos hate to lose), we're stuck playing catch-up. And not to point fingers or anything, but one thing that was mentioned in Sunday's article about County staffing levels was that public service is no longer looked upon as an honorable carrer. One of the two political parties has made it their central tennet that government is not the answer to our problems; that private industry is the solution to everything. After a few decades of pounding that message into the ears and minds of both adults and kids, is it any wonder that the situation has become so bad?
People complain about their taxes until they need a public service, like the fire department or police. It remains in the hands of politicians to make the "hard" decision and plan ahead for the future, even if it means spending tax dollars (and votes) to make sure things don't get too bad. I have always paid my taxes happily, and have always said that I would be willing to pay more, because I know that when you starve the government of resources, it results in situations like this.
posted by
Goat
on Jul 19, 2006 at 03:22 PM
Sarah, thank you for sharing this story with us. I was shocked by Don Maben's quote. If he feels the county is not doing enough, then why doesn't he do something about it? HE IS THE COUNTY! He's a county supervisor anyway... Mine infact (he sits as the supervisor for my district). I'd like to see less talk and more action on the part of the county supervisors. . There is a difference between being friendly to business and letting a few unethical businesses destroy our beauitufl county. posted by
anonymous
on Aug 2, 2006 at 10:29 AM
You know if just once Politicians were personally sued and jailed for their misbehavior while in office, then maybe we could get back to having representation for the people not industry.
But too many people stick their heads in the sand and scream that economic interests should always go before environment interests, I would love these ostriches to foot the bill when a mountain slides into a community, or a dam built over an earthquake fault fails, or when their pets and children start dropping like flies. Maybe then they would realize that environmental interests and economic interests are one in the same.
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