Sen. Boxer, Erin Brockovich Address Sickening Fumes
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and activist Erin Brockovich toured a school in the Southern California town of Mecca on Thursday, where fumes allegedly emanating from a waste recycling plant sickened students and staff.
“We’re going to be watching and we’re going to be making sure as long as they open they are not causing harm to anybody,” said U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer.
Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, called on federal regulators last month to take whatever steps necessary to identify and prevent noxious fumes from polluting the air around Saul Martinez Elementary School.
An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the South Coast Air Quality Management District isolated the stench to a waste processing facility run by Western Environmental Inc.
The company has declined to comment.
Boxer and Brockovich held a closed-door “listening session” shortly after noon with representatives from the EPA, AQMD, school administrators, teachers and parents.
“You have become a model, poster children if you will, to other communities throughout the United States of America on how to handle yourself and use your voice so you will be heard,” Brockovich.
Last fall, more than a dozen people from Saul Martinez Elementary were so nauseated by a rotten odor they were taken to a hospital for treatment.
Recess breaks at the school are now limited because of the stench, which has generated more than 200 complaints to the AQMD.
The agency announced on May 13 that a citation had been issued against Western Environmental for alleged violations of the California Health & Safety Code.
AQMD Executive Director Barry Wallerstein said the recycling plant, which handles soils contaminated by petroleum products and other chemicals, had been “the source of chronic odor problems for months.”
Just prior to the AQMD’s citation, the EPA issued an administrative order barring Western Environmental from accepting “bio-solids” without the agency’s approval and to cover piles of untreated waste.
The administrative decree specifies that the company and an affiliated firm, Waste Reduction Technologies, must deploy agents that dilute the stench or use sheeting to prevent emissions.
Regulators are working on mitigation measures with the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, on whose reservation the plant is located.
The tribe’s chairman, David Roosevelt, has said the recycling plant is providing a public benefit by turning bad soil into good.
