When I was still in high school, my bus stop was on the corner of Miles and Saturn avenues, in the city of Huntington Park. It was across the street from an elementary school, and a stone’s throw from city hall, the public library, and a very nice little park.
Each weekday morning, I’d stand on that corner to wait for a yellow LAUSD school bus to pick me up and take me to a magnet school in the South Bay. Every so often, a putrid odor would fill the crisp morning air. I’d hold my breath to avoid taking it in. Then, I’d stare down the street, hoping the bus would get there early and whisk me away.
In some ways, that's where the reporting for this series started — back in the early 2000s, back when I was still in high school and experiencing those bad smells that still occur today.
What a 'Toxic Tour' of Southeast L.A. has to do with this investigation
I recently hopped on another bus in Huntington Park — two decades later and now a reporter for LAist. I was with a group of high school students on a “Toxic Tour” of the area where I’d grown up.
The “Toxic Tour” is hosted by Communities for Better Environment (CBE), a nonprofit that’s advocated for clean air, soil, and water since the late 1970s. The tour takes you on a four-hour journey that highlights the impact of industrial polluters on residents’ health and quality of life. It also emphasizes how community members have fought back against environmental ills, this as a means of inspiring the next generation of activists. In September 2022, our tour was specifically designed for residents of Southeast L.A.
That day, the bus took us to:
- Park Avenue Elementary School in the city of Cudahy, which was shut down after parents and teachers raised concerns about the petroleum waste that bubbled up on the playground.
- It also took us to Linda Esperanza Marquez High School in Huntington Park, named for a community member who fought to clean up the site it sits on, once known as La Montaña for debris from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. For years, local residents dealt with the dust that blew from 600,000 tons of concrete ruins from the collapse of the Santa Monica Freeway stored there.
- And we made a stop at Exide Technologies in the city of Vernon.
For decades, this battery recycling plant spewed lead into surrounding neighborhoods. After this came to light, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving it up to California taxpayers to pay for the removal of contaminated soil from schools, parks, and thousands of homes.
Smelling that familiar stench
As we stood outside the battery plant, I recognized a stench: the same one I used to smell while waiting for the bus. A student from South Gate High recognized it, too. She said it was something she often encountered on her campus.
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- Investigation: Inside The Fight Over A Facility That Recycles Dead Animals In Southeast LA
- How and why we did it: The 2 Bus Rides That Spurred LAist’s Deep Dive Into Odor Issues In Vernon
- Compliance issues: LAist review finds companies violated sign rules
- The politics at play: A look back at Vernon's troubled history
- Resources: Smell Something Bad In Your Neighborhood? Here’s Where To Get Help
- Solutions: How decades of environmental woes have hurt, and mobilized, Southeast LA
Our tour guides told us that Southeast L.A. residents often attribute this dead animal odor to the Farmer John slaughterhouse in Vernon, which is renowned for its hauntingly picturesque pig murals. (Farmer John shut down the facility earlier this year.) On the tour, the guides pointed out that Vernon is also home to facilities that recycle animal remains from slaughterhouses, grocery stores, restaurants, and shelters. Through a process called “rendering,” those remains are turned into materials that can be used for other products.
I thought about the rendering plants on my drive home from work a few days later. While heading south on the 5 Freeway near the city of Commerce, a nauseating smell entered my car. I rushed to roll up the windows, but the stench still left me with a sharp headache.
I looked around to see where it could be coming from, wondering if anyone monitored odor emissions. When I got home, I checked.
What I learned about who was responsible for regulations
The South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) is tasked with monitoring and improving air quality in most of L.A. County. I also learned that community members can file odor complaints. Then, through CBE, I found out that AQMD was in the process of shutting down a rendering plant that the agency said had repeatedly broken the rules.
I mentioned all this to my editor, Mary Plummer, and she encouraged me to file public records requests with AQMD. Our goal was to get a better sense of the odors’ impact on local communities.
One of my first requests called for all air quality complaints from August 2022 to the present filed in Vernon, along with neighboring areas and some non-adjacent cities. I also requested all air quality complaints associated with Baker Commodities, Inc. the rendering plant that I'd heard was being shut down by regulators. In this case, we asked for records dating back to August 2019.
The first batch of public records data was illuminating. In recent years, AQMD has received hundreds of complaints about rendering plant odors. As I read through them, I noticed that some were from local schools, while others were from local businesses. One complainant said “IT SMELLS LIKE ROTTING DEAD BODIES EVERY SINGLE DAY.” Another person said that the “ODOR IS SO BAD THAT EVERYONE HAS LEFT THE OFFICE, AGAIN.”
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A rendering plant is a facility that converts livestock and pet carcasses, as well as kitchen grease and wastewater, into industrial-use fats and oils. Once converted, these materials are used to manufacture soaps, cosmetics, and many other products.
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- What type of companies send dead animals and other materials to rendering plants? Typically slaughterhouses, restaurants, supermarkets, and animal shelters.
- For example, many grocery stores collect meat and bone scraps from their butcher departments and send them to rendering plants.
- Good to know: Not all facilities process the same type of items. According to AQMD, some rendering companies process animals from shelters, while others, like Baker Commodities, Inc., primarily render livestock and poultry.
The complainants also said the stench made it difficult for them to breathe. They said it gave them headaches and made their stomachs churn, that it made their eyes itch and throats burn. Some community members reported smelling it in the evenings, others encountered it while dropping off their kids at school. Many said it was worse on hot days, and that they had to close their windows to avoid it. Some said the stench wouldn’t let them sleep. Some said they’d been smelling it for days in a row. Others were outraged because they’d been smelling it for years.
What was most startling was that all complaints were filed after air quality officials adopted a rule intended to prevent those very odors.
Understanding why regulators shut down Baker Commodities, Inc.
With this in mind, I looked into what was behind the shutdown of Baker’s rendering company. After scouring dozens of court documents, I confirmed that the company has sued AQMD for $200 million in damages. Perhaps more significantly, the lawsuit also aims to bar the agency from shutting down the plant again in the future.
These are the steps I took to fully understand what’s on the line with this lawsuit:
- Reached out to dozens of stakeholders, including rendering plant workers who could potentially lose their jobs.
- Repeatedly called Baker’s headquarters in Vernon and their lead attorney on the case, and spent many hours researching the company.
- I spoke with environmental justice activists and local officials who’d lodged complaints on behalf of their constituents.
- Then, to learn more about how rendering helps the environment, I spoke with two agricultural experts.
- To better understand how the odors can wreak havoc on community members’ health and quality of life, I spoke with experts in public health.
- I asked a historian/geographer to delve into Vernon’s long-term relationship with its neighbors.
- I also reached out to an attorney who is well-versed in environmental conflicts to help me navigate court records.
- I visited every rendering plant repeatedly and noticed that one didn’t have any signage to let passersby know where to report odors, which has been required since late 2017 under AQMD's Rule 415 to minimize the odors.
- And through this reporting, I realized that two of the rendering plants are within walking distance from Exide.
Why the area's history was so important
Exide’s proximity to the rendering plants matters to those with ties to the area. Over the course of my reporting, I spoke at length with community members throughout Southeast L.A., as well as Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles. We chatted on the phone, on social media, and in person, often at parks or in front of their homes. In some cases, I left notes in their mailboxes — in English and in Spanish.
Time and again, local residents said they felt their communities had been pummeled by environmental injustice. Some brought up the Delta jet that dumped fuel on a school in Cudahy in 2020. Others brought up the explosion at a scrap metal recycler in Maywood in 2016. Many underscored that Exide was allowed to operate without permits for decades. To ask community members to endure the stench of decaying carcasses while the soil in many homes is still being remediated, they said, is to add insult to injury.
These interviews included Cristina Garcia, a former state Assemblymember who grew up in Bell Gardens and taught math at Huntington Park High.
Garcia said that when she was teaching, she often had to choose between opening the windows and letting in the stench, or keeping them closed and subjecting her students to a hot room without air conditioning. She said it was hard for students to learn in those conditions. And it was hard for her to teach.
Communities like ours “have been treated like dumping grounds,” Garcia said. She’s certain that the ongoing stench of rotting flesh would not be tolerated in more affluent parts of town, so “why is this how we have to live?”
That question has stayed with me.
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This story is part of a series that was reported over the course of many months and required extensive interviews in the community and a dozen public records requests. Julia Barajas is the lead reporter and Mary Plummer is the main story editor.
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More on the LAist team behind this investigation:
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Reporting:
- Julia Barajas, Reporter
- Ted Rohrlich, Reporter
Editing:
- Mary Plummer, Senior Editor
- Megan Garvey, Executive Editor
Visuals:
- Samanta Helou Hernandez, Visual Journalist (photos)
- Alborz Kamalizad, Illustrator
Other support:
- Brian Frank, Editor, Digital and Special Projects
- Redmond Carolipio, Copy Editor
- Maloy Moore, Data Reporter
- Chanelle Berlin Johnson, Director Audience Engagement
- Kristine Malicse, Social Media Producer
- David Rodriguez, Partnership Producer
- Karlene Goller, First Amendment Attorney
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The Jane and Ron Olson Center for Investigative Reporting helped make this project possible. Ron Olson is an honorary trustee of Southern California Public Radio. The Olsons do not have any editorial input on the stories we cover.
