Neighbors to one of California’s biggest hazardous waste recyclers say they’re unfairly exposed to pollution, but can California afford to lose one of the few facilities that still takes toxic waste?
remain statewide to handle the waste of about 94,500 generators. As some companies turn to more sustainable practices, California’s volumes of hazardous waste have dropped a modest amount since the 1990’s, state analyses of shipping records show. For example, California shipped about 11% less hazardous waste in 2015 than it did in 1995.
– often ones with weaker environmental regulations, according to a Department of Toxic Substances Control analysis of shipping records. The average distance from a California hazardous waste generator to a destination facility is 500 miles, according to the July report. State and federal law allows hazardous waste facilities to operate on an expired permit so long as they’re working to get a new one. Companies need to apply six months before the expiration date. But it takes years to process a permit. A recent state law changed that timeline and beginning in 2025 companies will need to apply two years before the expiration date. Still, that’s not always enough time to get it done.
Some advocates and former agency employees also say the Department of Toxic Substances Control tends to push off tough decisions. Regulators can be hesitant to deny a permit because the state needs to have a place to send its hazardous waste. . It was one of four permit renewals the agency denied since 2010 but the only rejection for a commercial facility authorized to take federally defined hazardous waste, state records show. The company argued in court filings that it didn’t deserve such an “unprecedented administrative decision,” and that its services were “particularly important to Califomia’s safe and effective management of hazardous waste” because there were so few permitted commercial sites left in the state.
The company separates out the metals and cleans the liquid – selling the treated etching solution back to the tech industry and making copper products for manufacturers. But records show decades of problems at the site. The Department of Toxic Substances Control’s onlineshows the agency’s inspectors have identified violations at 32 different inspections since 1996. In 19 of those inspections the company was cited for so-called “Class 1” violations – the most serious designation suggesting a significant threat to people or the environment.
In a meeting with Phibro-Tech’s attorney, plant manager and Thaete as well as written responses to questions, company officials blamed some agency violations on ambiguities in the old permit and seemingly arbitrary or shifting enforcement. The later violations “can be considered to be ‘repeat violations’ only based on a very general characterization of storing hazardous waste in an unpermitted area, but the underlying facts do not compare,” according to the company.A stack of water bottles at Esther Rojo’s home in Los Nietos on June 7, 2023.
Jaime Sanchez of “Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech” near their processing plant in Santa Fe Springs on June 7, 2023. Sanchez got involved in environmental activism around 2011. It was after Phibro-Tech pushed for an updated permit that would allow it to not only keep operating but also to start treating oily water in addition to the various chemicals already handled on site. His neighbor, Rojo, told him what was going on and he started attending community meetings.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, to blame the conditions – and certainly specific health problems – on any one company, environmental health experts say. Residents described mystery ailments, and can’t help but wonder if their industrial neighbors are to blame for what they experienced: asthma, itchy skin, rare liver cancer, a child with an autoimmune disease, a dog with seizures, dead birds.Left: A groundwater monitoring well at Phibro-Tech Inc. in Santa Fe Spring on June 8, 2023.
But regulators have documented pollution in the soil and groundwater under the site, including trichloroethylene and hexavalent chromium, chemicals that have been linked to cancer. Advocates said the company has been slow to clean up contamination – putting the nearby community at risk and calling into question the company’s commitment to health and safety.
But given the environmental risks in the area and the company’s history of regulatory violations, residents don’t understand how the Department of Toxic Substances Control could let Phibro-Tech keep operating. There are five schools within a mile of the company. “As is readily apparent, there is a tension between monitoring existing facilities to ensure the protection of public health and the environment and ensuring that these existing facilities continue to operate so as to provide adequate capacity to prevent illegal disposal of hazardous waste,” according to the consultant’s report.
Why does it matter? Every single one of the 16 commercial treatment or disposal sites permitted to handle federally defined hazardous waste and that received such shipments last year abuts a community of color with a high rate of poverty, state shipping records and demographic data shows.The Department of Toxic Substances Control refused to be interviewed for this story, but did email responses to a list of written questions.
“These new permit conditions would enhance protections and make them more enforceable,” according to a department statement.
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