Latest news with #DepartmentofToxicSubstancesControl
San Francisco Chronicle
23-04-2025
- Health
- San Francisco Chronicle
California is about to make it easier to dump toxic waste in your neighborhood. Here's what to do about it
In Richmond, where I live, we know what happens when hazardous waste is treated as an afterthought. Our shoreline is tainted with the legacy of more than a century of heavy industry — shuttered chemical plants, old oil tanks and hazardous waste sites that still bleed toxins into the soil and San Francisco Bay. California's Department of Toxic Substances Control is updating the state's Hazardous Waste Management Plan, a document that's supposed to chart a safer, smarter future for dealing with our most dangerous industrial byproducts. But buried deep in the current version of the update is a proposal to allow more contaminated soil and toxic materials to be dumped in regular municipal landfills — sites never designed to safely contain hazardous waste. In the department's own words, it would like to 'identify and evaluate protective alternative management standards for soil identified as hazardous … to be disposed of in authorized non-hazardous waste landfills.' The bureaucratic language masks the dangerous implications: This policy shift could allow contaminated soil to land in everyday landfills near homes, schools and playgrounds, exposing Bay Area residents to heightened health and environmental risks. Richmond residents already breathe some of the dirtiest air in the state. Many of our children struggle with asthma, and our elders are burdened with pollution-related heart and respiratory disease and cancer. And for decades, Richmond activists have fought for stronger environmental protections — not just for ourselves, but for frontline communities across California. So, when the state quietly proposes to weaken rules that govern how and where toxic waste is dumped, we recognize it's not just a bureaucratic policy change — it's a threat. A threat to the health of our neighborhoods. A threat to the progress we've made. And a signal that California may be choosing pollution expansion over pollution reduction. Under this plan, the list of landfills eligible to receive toxic soil will grow, and many of them are in the Bay Area. Sites in San Jose, Vacaville, Half Moon Bay, Pittsburg and Petaluma. These are not theoretical locations. These are real communities with schools and homes and playgrounds, now being eyed as future dumping grounds for California's toxic leftovers. The Department of Toxic Substances Control says the plan will reduce long-distance trucking and lower emissions. But that's a false tradeoff. Instead of dealing with toxic waste at the source, this plan just spreads it farther and faster. This is not a pollution control strategy — it's a pollution expansion strategy. It's cheaper. It's easier. And it puts the risks right back on communities ill-equipped to deal with them. What's especially unacceptable is that this policy is moving forward with barely a whisper of public engagement. So far, there's only been one public hearing with the department's oversight body, the state Board of Environmental Safety — in Fresno, during the day, when most community members need to be at work. Despite these constraints, more than 40 speakers voiced opposition, including environmental justice advocates, public health experts, and impacted residents. Not a single person or industry group spoke in favor. And yet, the plan is now headed to the Bay Area unchanged. There will be a second public hearing on Thursday at the department's offices in Berkeley. It's the only opportunity for Bay Area residents to speak out. After a hearing in Los Angeles on May 15, the state Board of Environmental Safety will cast its final vote on July 15-16 at a meeting in Sacramento. The five-member Board of Environmental Safety, made up of appointees from the Legislature and the governor, was created in 2021 legislation to provide greater oversight and accountability to the Department of Toxic Substances Control, after years of criticism that the agency was nonresponsive to public input and lacked transparency in decision-making. The same law gave the board oversight authority over what gets included in the department's Hazardous Waste Management Plan. The hearings and July vote will be the most significant tests yet of the new board's ability to restore public confidence in the agency. After that, this policy becomes part of California's roadmap for hazardous waste — one that could remain in place for years. We still have time to change course. So far, members of the oversight board have raised important questions: Why weren't environmental justice groups consulted? Why hasn't the department conducted site-specific environmental and health impact studies? Why not invest in contaminant removal and source reduction, instead of lowering the bar for disposal? Those are the right questions. But now the board needs to hear from the public — especially from those of us who would bear the brunt of these changes. Richmond isn't alone in this fight. Communities all over the Bay Area are connected by this proposal. If the Department of Toxic Substances Control moves forward, it won't be just one city that feels the consequences, it will be dozens. And the people who feel it most will be the same ones who've been left out of the conversation for too long. Help us tell the board: We're not going to accept a plan that rolls back protections and treats our communities as dumping grounds. California should be leading the nation in environmental stewardship. This new hazardous waste plan risks sending us in the wrong direction. We deserve a plan that prioritizes health, safety and justice — not one that makes it easier to spread pollution to already overburdened communities. Janet Johnson is coordinator of the Richmond Shoreline Alliance, a project of San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility, working to protect the Bay Area's shoreline and Richmond residents from environmental harm.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Join in to tell state officials Fresno must not be a dumping ground for waste
Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley are already home to some of the worst air pollution in the nation — yet state officials are quietly advancing a plan that could make it even worse. On March 20, the state Board of Environmental Safety will meet in Fresno to evaluate a proposal from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control that would allow more hazardous waste to be dumped in landfills across California, including here in the Valley. This means more exposure to toxic chemicals, more truck traffic bringing hazardous materials through our communities, and more risks to our health, water and air. The most disturbing part is that DTSC has not conducted any meaningful environmental review or public health studies to assess the consequences of this plan. The agency also failed to properly inform or engage the communities that will be most impacted. Opinion This is unacceptable. On Tuesday, dozens of residents, farm workers, environmental advocates and community leaders will rally at Fresno City Hall before joining the Environmental Safety hearing. We are coming together to demand one simple thing: stop this reckless plan before it's too late. For decades, the Central Valley has been treated like California's pollution dumping ground — a sacrificial zone where low-income, rural, and farm worker communities are forced to live with the environmental consequences of industrial pollution, oil and gas operations, and unchecked pesticide use. Many of these communities, including those in Fresno County, already suffer from sky-high asthma rates, extreme exposure to diesel pollution, and widespread groundwater contamination. We know what happens when regulatory agencies fail to protect us — our health, our children and our future are put at risk. Now, DTSC wants to expand hazardous waste dumping in landfills that weren't originally designed for it without fully evaluating how this will impact local air and water quality. This is not a pollution control strategy; it's pollution expansion. Under California law, DTSC is required to conduct thorough environmental impact assessments, consult with impacted communities, and ensure full transparency before making major hazardous waste policy changes. But instead of following these basic legal protections, DTSC is rushing forward with this plan without providing a full environmental impact report that evaluates site-specific risks, a public health assessment on how this could increase respiratory illnesses and groundwater contamination, or a real community engagement process that includes accessible materials in Spanish and Indigenous languages and meetings in all impacted regions. This is a textbook case of environmental injustice. Sadly, Fresno is no stranger to this treatment, and we have fought back before. Through the Central California Environmental Justice Network, we join with farm workers, community leaders and public health experts to reduce pollution, protect drinking water and demand stronger safeguards for vulnerable communities. We are at a defining moment for Fresno's leaders, policymakers and residents. If we don't stop this plan now, more hazardous waste could be dumped in our communities for years to come — without proper oversight or accountability. That's why we are calling on the Board of Environmental Safety to reject this hazardous waste expansion plan until proper studies are completed. DTSC must conduct a full environmental review and hold meaningful public hearings in all affected communities. Local and state leaders must stand with Central Valley residents and demand transparency, environmental protections, and real public engagement. Fresno residents are coming together to fight back. On March 20 at 10:15 a.m. we will rally at Fresno City Hall before heading inside to the BES hearing at 11 a.m. We call on other Valley residents sick of the status quo to join us. The Valley deserves clean air, safe water, and a government that listens to the people — not just polluters. It's time for DTSC to listen. Nayamin Martinez, MPH, is the executive director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. She has spent her career advocating for clean air, water, and public health protections in the Central Valley.
New York Times
10-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
A California Battery Plant Burned. Residents Have Gotten Sick, and Anxious.
The vast farmlands just off the coast of California's Monterey Bay are usually quiet during the winter, when there are no crops to pick. This winter, a different kind of stillness has taken hold. First, fears of immigration raids paralyzed the immigrant communities that make up the agricultural work force. And now, anxiety has spread over what some in the region believe is a sprawling and silent environmental disaster. Last month, a battery-storage plant went up in flames and burned for days, prompting the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents and shutting down local schools. The plant, located in Moss Landing, an unincorporated community in Monterey County, is the largest facility in the world that uses lithium-ion batteries to store energy. Residents have reported feeling ill, and many of them worry that the fire polluted the air, soil and water with toxins. 'Now you don't see anybody walking outside because it's terrifying, everything that's going on,' said Esmeralda Ortiz, who had to evacuate from her home in Moss Landing after the plant began burning on Jan. 16. She noticed an odd metallic odor as she and her two young children fled. She said she later took her children to the doctor after they complained of headaches and sore throats, symptoms she also had. Eventually, her children felt better, but Ms. Ortiz said she worries about the potential long-term health effects and whether the strawberry fields where she and her husband plan to work during the harvest have been contaminated. No homes were damaged in the fire, which unfolded more than 300 miles north of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in the Los Angeles area. For weeks, residents, officials, researchers and environmental and public-health experts have been trying to understand the scale of damage, but so far there have been few answers. What was unleashed by the plumes of smoke from thousands of burning lithium-ion batteries? And where did it go? 'A lot of people are concerned about the ingestion of heavy metals,' said Brian Roeder, who moved his family into a rental home for the next month after they felt ill at their home in Prunedale, about eight miles southeast of the fire. 'Most people can't do that,' Mr. Roeder, 62, said of temporarily relocating. 'But we have a 7-year-old and we're like, 'We got to get him out of here.'' Vistra, the Texas-based energy company that operates the plant, said there were approximately 100,000 lithium ion battery modules inside the storage facility and that most of them had burned. The company said an exact accounting had yet to be done, because crews were still prohibited from entering the facility to do a visual inspection. Tests conducted by a state agency, the Department of Toxic Substances Control, detected cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese — heavy metals found in lithium ion batteries — at wide-ranging levels in soil sampled at eight sites near the plant and up to roughly five miles away from it. Officials said the data was preliminary and still needed to be thoroughly analyzed. Tests of the local drinking water found the presence of the metals but at safe levels. Air quality monitoring has not detected heavy metal particles or hydrogen fluoride, a gas associated with the batteries, county officials said. In a separate study, researchers at San Jose State University's Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in the Elkhorn Slough Reserve, an estuary next to the battery facility, found that the levels of cobalt, nickel and manganese had significantly increased in topsoil samples in the area compared to levels from studies conducted before the fire. The results of soil testing by the state agency and the university lab were cited in a lawsuit filed on behalf of four residents by a legal team that includes the environmental activist Erin Brockovich. The suit alleged that the amount of cobalt, manganese, nickel and copper in the preliminary state data exceeded federal Environmental Protection Agency risk levels for residential soil, including for children. The lawsuit claimed the facility's fire-suppression system was deficient. It was filed against Vistra as well as other defendants, including the state's largest utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, which operates another energy storage facility at the Moss Landing plant. Vistra declined to comment on the lawsuit. The company said in a statement that it was working closely with local officials and community partners. 'We have and will continue to do everything we can to do right by our community and are working in concert with federal, state and local agencies to ensure public health and safety,' Vistra's statement read. PG&E said it was reviewing the complaint. Mr. Roeder has helped lead residents in collecting more than 100 of their own soil samples for testing. The preliminary results detected varying concentrations of lithium, cobalt, nickel or manganese as far as 46 miles away. Haakon Faste, 47, who lives in Ben Lomond, a mountain community roughly 25 miles northwest of the plant, recalled a metallic taste in the air in the days after the fire broke out on Jan. 16. He and his wife experienced a number of symptoms: sore throat, headaches, bloody noses. 'It feels like you're breathing — I don't know if it's like breathing acid or it's like the air is so incredibly dry that it burns deep down into your lungs, so it hurts to swallow,' Mr. Faste said. The couple evacuated and moved to a short-term rental. Trips to urgent care have yielded few answers about what may have sickened them. People who inhale high concentrations of heavy metals experience profound health effects, said Dr. Justin Colacino, an associate professor of environmental health science at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Throat irritation, lung inflammation and difficulty breathing can occur with heavy-metal inhalation, and manganese can have neurological effects if inhaled at high levels. 'If people in the community are reporting these, that would be consistent with what we know from folks that breathe in metals like this in an occupational setting where the levels tend to be high,' Dr. Colacino said. Even without a full understanding of the environmental and health effects, the fire has raised questions about the safety of energy storage technology that California is relying on to meet its ambitious timeline for a clean-energy future. The Moss Landing Power Plant has stood tall over the region since 1950, generating gas-powered electricity for the state's grid. Vistra's lithium-ion battery facility went online at the site in 2020, in an expansion approved by the California Public Utilities Commission. Facilities like the one in Moss Landing store excess energy collected during the day and release it as electricity into the grid at night. Presented as a step toward a carbon-free future, the expansion received little attention or resistance from the public or from interest groups, said Glenn Church, a county supervisor who represents northern Monterey County. 'We are right now in a place where government does not have the knowledge to regulate this technology and industry does not have the know-how to control it,' Mr. Church said. When a lithium-ion battery catches fire, industry best practice is to let it burn. Dousing it with water is ineffective and can cause a chemical reaction. 'I know of no other industry that does that,' Mr. Church said of letting the material burn. He is pushing to keep the facility off line until there is a full accounting of the cause of the fire and its fallout. In addition, Dawn Addis, the state assembly member who represents the central coast, has introduced a bill to require local input in the permitting process and new regulations for new energy storage facilities. And the utilities commission has proposed the implementation of new safety rules. The depositing of heavy metals onto soil carries added implications for a region known for growing strawberries and other produce, and for the workers who pick the fruit. At a forum on immigrant rights hosted by the local school district in nearby Castroville in late January, many hands shot up when the presenter asked how many farmworkers were in the room. 'People are in a such big moment of stress that they say it's one thing and another,' Maria Tarelo, who works packing berries, said of the fears of federal raids and the battery plant fire. Ms. Tarelo has advised her fellow workers to take precautions by wearing masks and gloves, as they face the potential of working land that could turn out to be hazardous to their health. For many men and women who labor in the fields, the pressing concern is that contaminated crops could result in less work. 'Then we don't have anything to pay for food or rent,' Ms. Tarelo said. 'Sometimes, no matter the state of the environment, we have to go work.'
