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Does it smell like this where you live?

2010-02-07T00:13:25Z

“No, it doesn’t,” was my answer to a Commerce High School student as we stood with a group of 25 other strangers at an intersection surrounded by three rendering plants in Huntington Park, a neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles. It only took walking off the bus for everyone to be hit with the smells that accompany animal slaughter, and if you weren’t already a vegetarian, you might consider being one for the day.

The rendering plants were one of the stops along the “toxic tour” the Communities for a Better Environment hosts about once a month to shed light on the environmental injustices that the people of Commerce, Industry, Huntington Park, Vernon, Boyle Heights, Maywood, the port communities of Wilmington and San Pedro and everyone who lives along the Alameda Corridor face daily. It feels like many of these neighborhoods are forgotten communities, and, as we heard on the tour, many residents lack the resources to challenge the intermodal yards, factories, powerplants and highway expansion projects planned in their backyards. One of the first powerful visuals of the tour was a paper factory pumping tons of pollution out of its stacks less than a block away from the Vernon elementary school. No doubt there are children who live and play within blocks of this one facility let alone others equally as toxic.

To get to the ports of LA and Long Beach, we took the I-710, which is notoriously within what is referred to as the “diesel death zone.” The nearby Alameda Corridor is the genesis for this name. It initially was planned to carry goods via rail from the ports to the intermodal yards 25 miles from the ports, in an effort to reduce truck traffic and diesel pollution. Turns out the rail line along the corridor only handles about 30 percent of its projected capacity of goods and none of it is electric -- as originally planned. In lieu of utilizing this railline to its capacity, CalTrans has proposed expanding the 710 from the ports to Pasadena. CBE has been fighting the expansion efforts at the port end of the 710 for at least nine years and the people of Alambra (near south Pasadena) have been fighting the north end for 40 years. CalTrans’ plan is to expand the highway to 14 lanes, seven going each way. Some might say that we need to encourage growth and facilitate goods movement, but clearly there are smarter ways for the city to grow and eliminate some traffic concerns than to virtually double the size of the existing I-710 freeway.

Once at the ports, it was clear how 40 percent of our nation’s cargo goes through the two facilities on its way to the Wal-Marts and Targets of the country. It’s just a massive facility and if the ship, truck and locomotive traffic weren’t enough to concern you about the lungs of people living there and their significantly higher cancer rate, then perhaps the Conoco-Phillips behemoth would convince you that the port neighborhoods are lethal.

Standing in one of the cul-de-sacs abutting the plant, I see children playing on the cement in their gated yards, a fine coating of soot on parked cars and nine or 10 smoke stacks pumping out a mushroom cloud of toxins one after the other. Sure, these people probably know the pollution coming from those stacks isn’t going to prolong their lives, but I wonder if they assume the facility is cleaner than they think, or that plant management would tell them if they were inhaling something truly hazardous.

Still, this is the one place on the toxics tour where I saw someone who isn’t typically associated with environmental justice concerns, a Caucasian woman. Everywhere else we’ve been today, there are Latino or African American families living near diesel death zones where their children are plagued by asthma and they are working at jobs that are accompanied by diesel pollution and premature death.

Many of the problems in these neighborhoods can be traced back to corporations building facilities in low income, minority neighborhoods. At the time, residents might welcome such a facility because it promises jobs. These jobs generally turn out to be low wage and highly toxic to workers’ health. I know no one wants a refinery in their community, but it struck me today how little clout neighborhoods like Huntington Park and Maywood have in barring these polluting facilities from setting up shop a block from a local school or community park. Projects like the ones I saw would never be built in Beverly Hills or Santa Monica, but they have to exist somewhere -- right? Most often it’s in these communities already beset by a number of other lifespan limiting factors and very little is done to mitigate their effect on the community.

It was difficult to see the people living in these communities with their quality of life so diminished by pollution I don’t see on a daily basis. There’s more all of us can do to help disadvantaged communities like Huntington Park, but I’m glad my colleagues David Pettit and Adrian Martinez are fighting for communities like Boyle Heights and Vernon to stop projects like a 940 megawatt power plant from being built and for challenging the I-710 expansion project in addition to their projects to protect Wilmington and San Pedro from port pollution. But at the end of the tour, I got back in my car and drove 20 miles to Santa Monica where I knew I would breathe easier, the headache I’d had since seeing the Conoco-Phillips plant would go away, and my throat would feel better. I had the luxury of driving away from the pollution that kills thousands of people in Los Angeles every year.

You Can Choose Where You Live, but Can You Choose to Breathe Clean Air?

2009-04-14T19:27:34Z

Is it really a choice to breathe clean air? A recent study announces that in addition to exercise and diet, clean air gains since the 1980s can add about two and a half years to the average American's life expectancy. The study concludes that clean air tacks about five months to your life (or 15% of the 2.5 years figure). It's certainly good news that our country's air has improved overall during the past 30 years, however, in LA, we persist with unhealthy air that cuts short thousands of lives.

Dr. Douglas Dockery, head of the Environmental Health Department at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston authored the study and reflects on the inequities of air pollution. "Clean or dirty air is something that is being imposed on you. You do have a choice on whether you smoke, drink, exercise or what type of food you eat. But you do not have a choice on what air you breathe." The article goes on to quote a local Boston scientist saying that "the damage caused by regularly breathing such air as like living with someone who smokes."

Yesterday, the Port of Long Beach unanimously approved the Middle Harbor expansion project, which they expect will cost $750 million and 10 years to build. The size of the expansion is likened to that of the Port of Vancouver and the level of cargo containers (throughput) to a third more of what the fourth-largest port in the nation, the Port of Oakland, handles. That's a massive project that will employ thousands of local workers, but will increase air pollution in an area that has some of the most toxic air in the region.

There is no doubt that both ports are trying hard to reverse the tide of their filthy pasts, but the question is, are they doing enough to quickly help harbor area residents? Based on our review of the project, the answer is no. While the Middle Harbor Project includes some good air quality mitigation (e.g. use of cleaner fuels in ships and shore side power), it fails to include several critical technologies like cleaner trucks or provide sufficient resources to protect the community from port operations.

Currently, the ports of LA and Long Beach generate roughly 2,000 tons of particulate pollution annually. This area is also home to some of the highest rates of cancer, asthma and premature death figures in the nation. Roughly 2,400 deaths are attributed to pollution from the Ports of LA and Long Beach every year. Because of these levels of pollution and the impacts to public health and the environment, NRDC is part of a coalition that's working with the ports to ensure local residents are represented when either port plans to expand.

The Port of LA has included community mitigation funds for recent expansion projects, going back to the $50 million it set aside for the $200 million China Shipping terminal expansion and more recently, $50 million for the 5-year TraPac terminal expansion project. The money goes toward installing air filters in schools, nursing homes and residences in addition to building more health clinics in what is considered a medically underserved area. These efforts go toward limiting diesel particulate pollution, one of the main culprits for respiratory disease.

After looking at the environmental impact report for the Middle Harbor project, the Port of Long Beach expects 2% of the total budget ($15 million out of $750 million) to go to community mitigation. That includes $5 million for greenhouse gas reduction, $5 million to install air filters, and $5 million for health clinics. Roughly 500,000 people live in the City of Long Beach, so that means that $15 million in community mitigation over the 10-year project works out to $30 a person in mitigation for the entire project, or $3 a year. About the cost of a small latte.

This is the first time the Port of Long Beach has offered community mitigation funding within an expansion project proposal. I look forward to the day when residents of LA can say they are breathing air that will help them live longer, but as long as the Port of Long Beach only allots 2% of a $750 million, 10-year project budget to protecting residents from its filthy operations, we'll need to breathe carefully.

When the LA Air Tastes Like Burning

2009-04-07T17:52:16Z

You know the winded feeling you get after exerting yourself a bit too much for too long? For me, that feeling usually happens with running, mainly since it isn't my favorite form of exercise and I don't find myself sprinting down the street that often. I should like it since the long distance skill runs in my family -- my dad ran marathons for years and my brother just finished his first one in Colorado -- but I've never hit my stride when it comes to hitting the pavement, which might explain why I haven't experienced the searing pain I felt in my lungs while in east LA over the weekend.

My friend Ana is pretty much obsessed with public transit and when you live in LA, that's a bizarre obsession since everyone gets around by car, but there are those lucky individuals who live close to the subway or main bus lines and swear by the efficiency.

Ana asked me a couple weeks ago to participate in the first ever Transit People race that was held this past weekend. The race asks teams to start from locations around the city and race to a final destination, all by using public transit to more or less elevate the fact that you can get around LA pretty easily using public transit. Transit People is also a charity that uses public transit to take inner city kids on field trips to the aquarium, natural history museum and numerous other LA attractions.

Our team was planning to start the race from the USC campus, so after meeting Ana at her apartment in Silverlake (sortof north LA), we headed to USC (south LA) via rail and bus, connected with the rest of our team, received our final coordinates and took off for the nearest bus. Turns out we almost missed the bus and everyone had to sprint for it. Not being a sprinter, this was mildly embarrassing, but we all made the bus which ended up taking us to the final destination without a transfer, but not before another rival team got on the same bus with us. Once we figured out they were also with Transit race, our team sketched out a strategy to jump off the bus and book it to our final destination, Heritage Square Park in east LA.

Sure the bus stop and park were maybe a little more than a half mile away, but again, we were sprinting and it was 75 degrees out already, and I swear, we were running uphill. Luckily, I was not the first to slow down, and thankfully the majority of the other team really never tried to catch us (they later referred to our team as "all fitness types"), which meant that we'd won the race, but for 30 minutes after we made it to the park, everyone on my team was still wheezing and most of us were still coughing. Everyone said it tasted like there was something in the air, like a fine coating of pollution, or as Ralph Wiggum describes it, it tasted like burning. More than 24 hours later, it still felt like I had something caught in my throat.

The type of air I inhaled after sprinting to Heritage Park and again to make the rail stop a couple hours later is the worst in the country and has been for decades. My colleague and an LA native, David Pettit, tells me how it felt like a knife was piercing his lungs after playing outside while he was growing up.

This was the first time I can remember breathing air like this. I'm lucky to live on the Westside of the city, near the ocean breezes that blow pollution inland, to hover over areas like east LA. It's a combination of weather patterns and the expansive pollution from cars, diesel trucks, trains, and stationary sources like power plants that contribute to this choking soup of air pollution. Who knows how much particulate matter I inhaled during those short sprints? What really concerns me is the kids who were at the park, putting on a talent show for us and their families from east LA. They have the rest of their lives ahead of them and are stuck breathing this toxic brew every day.

I want to say we can fix this, but LA has dealt with smog stinging Angelinos' eyes and lungs for more than 50 years. And now we know it also kills 24,000 Californians annually or 15 people a day if you live in the LA air basin (page 4, the 5,400 premature deaths figure, citing CARB). We need to do better. East LA is home to some of the region's worst polluters and many minority families. Those families deserve to go outside and sprint if they want to without feeling like they're taking years off their lives.