When residents don’t trust the company who poisoned their water and soil, and they don’t trust the government agencies mandated to stop the company, they’ll either ignore everything and hope for the best, or they’ll take matters into their own hands.
Both reactions are in abundance in Vernon, California near the site of a now-shuttered battery recycling plant now owned by Exide Technologies. Exide and the plant’s previous owners knowingly leached lead and other carcinogens into the soil, air and water in surrounding residential neighborhoods, a problem made much worse by inadequate government oversight.
State regulators repeatedly warned Exide Technologies, which ran the Vernon battery smelting facility since 2000, and its previous owners that the plant was releasing dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere. Exide responded only by paying fines and continuing business as usual.
The fines were small considering the scope of the damage. A Los Angeles Times investigation found that, over more than 15 years, Exide paid $869,000 in penalties and that “most of the fines were assessed in the last two years.”
The Department of Justice shut down the plant last year, but it hardly brought relief or closure to residents who said the shutdown took too long and that regulator’s warnings to Exide carried no authority or urgency. And neither the company nor the government warned residents that they may have been ingesting lead and known carcinogens like arsenic and benzene for decades.
Exide inherited the Vernon plant by acquiring GNB Technologies in 2000, but lead smelting had been continuous at the site since 1922.
In 1999, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) found high levels of lead in the sediment at the bottom of the storm water retention pond and required the plant’s operators to clean it up. A 2013 analysis of air quality found that Exide may have elevated the cancer risk for 110,000 Los Angeles residents. That same year the LA Times…