The Brief

Living among Southern California’s industrial facilities can have adverse effects on residents’ health and quality of life.

Rendering plants produce odors that are among the most offensive. These facilities receive dead animals, as well as kitchen grease and wastewater, and turn those materials into ingredients for pet food, cosmetics, and other products. Odors from the plants sometimes seep into neighboring communities and can cause health problems.

Four rendering companies are clustered together a few miles southeast of downtown L.A., in and very near the city of Vernon, along with a handful of slaughterhouses, meat processors, and many other industrial facilities. Public health experts interviewed by LAist say the density of these facilities, coupled with the hazardous chemicals rendering plants can emit, pose serious health risks to nearby residents.

But SoCal residents don’t have to face these issues alone. If you encounter a foul odor in your neighborhood, you can reach out to the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD).

This agency is tasked with monitoring air quality in the area. In 2021, it received nearly 400 complaints about rendering plants in the region — and many more in the years before that, according to Wayne Nastri, the regulatory agency’s executive director. The number of complaints dropped significantly this year, but the issue still persists.

An LAist review of AQMD records found that these odor complaints have been lodged from homes and businesses in surrounding neighborhoods, as well as from local schools. One person who reported air problems said they’ve been waking up to the stench of “burning animal carcass” for the past 32 years.

Where else have odor issues emerged? 

Since 2000, most air quality complaints to AQMD have involved odors. Agency officials say the spike in 2021 was in response to problems at Dominguez Channel and the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant.

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Back in 2021, South Bay residents endured the smell of rotten egg for several days. The stench was later attributed to a large warehouse fire that caused chemicals in beauty products to seep into the Dominguez Channel. Those chemicals killed off vegetation along the channel, releasing high levels of hydrogen sulfide, a colorless gas that can be harmful to human health. Residents reported headaches, fatigue, and respiratory problems.

That same year, the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant in Playa del Rey discharged 17 million gallons of raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean. Community members experienced nausea, headaches, and eye irritation. To ward off the smell, they shut their windows and avoided going outdoors. Some of them wore masks inside their homes.

What is the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and what does it do?

AQMD — sometimes also referenced as SCAQMD — is a regulatory agency that manages air quality in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. The agency’s employees work to control emissions from stationary sources of air pollution, including power plants, refineries and gas stations. AQMD issues permits and inspects these businesses to evaluate their compliance with local air quality rules, which are aligned with federal and state standards.

Emissions from mobile sources, like cars, trains, and airplanes, are monitored by other agencies.

If you live in northern L.A. County, there’s one exception to keep in mind: The Antelope Valley — which includes cities like Lancaster and Palmdale — is outside AQMD’s jurisdiction. That area is monitored by the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District.

Why is air quality important?

Jill Johnston, associate professor of population and public health sciences at USC, underscores that strong odors don’t just diminish local residents’ quality of life, they can also impact their health.

Emissions from rendering plants can contain hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide, she said. These chemicals can exacerbate asthma symptoms and elevate blood pressure, Johnston added, and long-term exposure can adversely affect respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

On its website, AQMD warns that air pollution can “cause or worsen many health problems, including asthma attacks, respiratory disease, heart disease, certain types of cancers, and premature death.”

How can I report a foul odor?

For residents who live within AQMD’s boundaries, there are three ways to file an odor report:

• Call 1-800-CUT-SMOG (1-800-288-7664) 
• Visit AQMD’s online complaint system
• Download and use AQMD’s phone app

All options are available 24 hours a day. During business hours (7 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday), your call will be answered by an attendant. Outside of business hours, you’ll be asked to leave a voice message.

The app is especially useful because it enables you to track the status of your complaint. You can also attach any images related to the issue.

How to report an odor complaint via the AQMD's app. Click for more information.

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How to complete the complaint form via the app. Click for more info.

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In addition to odor complaints, these options can be used to report excessive dust or smoke in your neighborhood.

If you live in the Antelope Valley, you can file a complaint by completing a form on this website or by calling 661-723-8070. You can also email the agency at complaints@avaqmd.ca.gov.

What information should I have at hand?

If you encounter a strong odor, think of specific ways to describe it (like “rotten eggs,” “burned plastic,” etc.) and try to identify its source, said Victor Yip, who oversees compliance and enforcement at AQMD.

Air quality agencies will ask you for the following information:

• The time the air quality incident occurred and whether it’s continuing at the time of your report
• The type of air quality complaint (dust, odor, smoke, etc.)
• Whether you have experienced this type problem in the past
• The wind direction, if known
• The name and address of the alleged source and the type of facility, if known
• Your contact information

When it comes to recurring odor issues, it’s useful to tell the agency the full scope of the problem, for example, "This happens every night at this time," Yip said. These details help inspectors “track [the odor] and get more information to be able to launch our investigation.”

Yip urges residents to file complaints when an odor issue is happening, instead of waiting for it to pass, which can make it difficult to confirm and investigate.

He also noted that AQMD takes anonymous complaints. However, if you choose not to provide your contact information, the inspector won’t be able to contact you to learn more about the issue or provide any follow-up information.

What happens if the smell is occurring outside of business hours?

When the agency receives complaints after hours, they’re routed to a standby supervisor who reviews them to determine if it’s necessary to take immediate action. Unless the air quality incident appears to pose a serious threat to the health or safety of the public, the supervisor usually dispatches an inspector to follow-up the next business day, Yip said.

If AQMD receives three or more complaints from different households about the same issue, an inspector will be dispatched after hours.

How are air quality complaints resolved?

Some complaints can be resolved over the phone without additional follow-up. For example, after getting a call back from an inspector, a community member might say the odor they encountered is no longer present.

Other odor complaints require more work. If the source of a stench is unknown, an inspector will investigate potential sources based on the description in the complaint.

In these cases, the inspector assigned to your complaint might call for additional information. Yip said investigations are sometimes delayed when community members don’t answer follow-up calls.

“We understand everyone's busy,” he added, “but it would be just very, very helpful to our inspectors if you can pick up the phone.”

Following that chat, the inspector will locate and attempt to verify the source. Then, the inspector will survey the facility to determine the cause of the air quality problem.

When there are serious violations, penalties for the offending business can go up to $10,000 per day.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.