Air quality officials step up actions at Boyle Heights warehouse as odor complaints rack up

Southern California air quality officials have given Lineage LLC a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to mitigate the odors of decomposing food at the company’s Boyle Heights warehouse. The move comes after residents filed more than 900 complaints of “rotten, sour, garbage-type smells” last week.

The rotting food is a result of last month’s fire at the Lineage cold-storage warehouse, which burned for a week and spewed acrid smoke around L.A., inundating Boyle Heights and surrounding neighborhoods.

The deadline, which marked an escalation in enforcement tactics, was in a demand letter from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the agency tasked with maintaining air quality in Southern California. In a statement issued Friday, the agency said it has worked with Lineage for weeks to recommend ways for the company to lessen the spread of odors, but “the company has not yet incorporated several key actions.”

South Coast AQMD outlined more than 20 steps for Lineage to take to comply with state law on public nuisances, such as requiring them to apply odor neutralizer to food waste and trucks containing it, requiring coverings for parked trucks loaded with food waste, and notifying the community of any activities that may increase odors.

For its part, Lineage reports that it has been attempting to mitigate the rancid smells coming from its warehouse as it hauls away dozens of truckloads of waste.

“We are using a variety of approaches to minimize the effects, including: physical barriers (StormWrapper), applying a bleach solution in and around the building, running mist deodorizing systems around the site, and applying deodorizers directly to the debris to reduce odors as much as possible during that period,” Lineage’s website reads. “It will get better as the cleanup progresses.”

The demand letter sent to Lineage also notified the company that South Coast AQMD planned to start a process that could lead to the company being fined or sued.

LAist has reached out to Lineage and South Coast AQMD to determine if Lineage has presented the agency with its plan to put the additional odor controls in place but had not received a response before publication.

About South Coast AQMD’s notices

South Coast AQMD has issued notices of violation to Lineage for at least seven consecutive days, starting July 12, for “discharging such quantities of air contaminants to cause injury, detriment, nuisance or annoyance to a considerable number of persons.”

Though South Coast AQMD has not announced if it has levied any fines on Lineage yet, it has a formal process in place to resolve the notices of violations it has issued. Any fines would then be collected by the state.

According to the South Coast AQMD, violators of state air quality regulations face a sliding scale of penalties depending on the severity. The base civil penalties range from $5,000 per day for a simple violation to $75,000 daily if a person “willfully and intentionally emits an air contaminant” in violation of state law. Those penalties could be $100,000 or more if the contaminants are found to have harmed anyone.

South Coast AQMD has not yet announced litigation against Lineage, though it mentioned the possibility of a civil suit in statements released last week.

UCLA environmental health professor Yoshira Ornelas Van Horne said that criminal cases against companies responsible for air contamination are more difficult to bring to trial compared to other forms of accountability.

Prosecutors “have to show that they intentionally were doing something bad, and that they knew that they were doing this, and they still kept doing it,” Ornelas Van Horne said. “So most of the time, the legal pathway is through these penalties and civil lawsuits — if at all — to bring them into compliance.”

Another ongoing question is whether the warehouse continues to be a source of air pollutants. A tracker on Lineage’s website shows that on July 15 and 17, the most recently reported days, the air quality was within EPA guidelines for all contaminants measured, including carbon monoxide and ammonia. (You can see AQMD’s measurements here.)

Smoke from the Boyle Heights warehouse fire could be seen for miles in June. This image was captured June 20 on the 110/105 Freeway interchange.

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Kim Orr

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For LAist

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Ornelas Van Horne, who studies the impact of pollutants on marginalized communities, said that Lineage was using benchmarks that were meant for acute exposure to contaminants, which the EPA defines as under 14 days. Since it’s now been over a month since the warehouse caught fire, she said it’s important to reevaluate how appropriate the guidelines for acute exposure are in this situation.

“What they're measuring is in concentrations of what we'd call PPM,” parts per million, Ornelas Van Horne said. “But as we move toward … longer time periods, those levels actually go down to PPB [parts per billion], and so that's super important to emphasize.”

Other local agencies’ oversight

Though South Coast AQMD has taken the lead on penalties and enforcement so far, other agencies can also step in — though they are limited by law and jurisdiction in terms of what and when they can do it.

On July 1, the L.A. Department of Building and Safety ordered Lineage to remove all of the estimated 85 million pounds of spoiling food waste from the warehouse within 45 days.

If Lineage is found not to be in compliance by the deadline, the Department of Building and Safety can then hire contractors to remove waste and harmful materials and even demolish the building, among other actions, according to a June 29 executive order from L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

The cost of these services, plus a 40% surcharge, would then be “placed as a lien on the property upon which the nuisances exist.”

In the same executive order, Mayor Bass committed to recovering the costs of its firefighting efforts, remediation, administrative overhead costs and community recovery centers from “all responsible parties.”

But city leaders have indicated they’re not happy with that timeline. Bass said in an interview with LAist media partner CBS LA that despite her original 45-day deadline, “these odors are so severe they need to move faster than that.”

The L.A. County Department of Public Health told LAist it has looked into issues involving flies and other potential health issues in and near the warehouse, including “increased fly activity, decaying organic waste odors, and sanitation concerns.”

Public health officials have issued their own notice to abate these issues on July 15, after an investigation that found violations of Los Angeles County code related to fly breeding.

The Department of Public Health also said that the city of Los Angeles and Lineage had been directed to develop a pest control plan after reports of rats, flies and other insects. Bass' office said L.A.'s sanitation department placed and is monitoring "about 250 rodent control stations around the facility and in the neighborhood." It also said the city has hired a pest control company.

LAist has reached out to Lineage for further comment on their vermin control plans.

“Removing [the food waste] safely takes time and requires specialized contractors,” Lineage’s website reads. “We are required to follow strict environmental and safety protocols set by the City of Los Angeles and [South Coast Air Quality Management District]. We have cleanup crews working around the clock, and we are pushing to move faster wherever we safely can.”

Still, the company will indeed have to pick up the pace in order to meet the city’s mid-August deadline. An estimated 3.5% of the total food waste — 1,506 tons — has been cleared out to date. Between July 15 and July 20, Lineage cleared out 695 tons of spoiled food, an average of 139 tons per day, according to data released by the company. At that pace, the company will have removed about 10.1% of the estimated 85 million pounds of food waste by Aug. 15. LAist has asked Lineage about the pace of cleanup and will update this article when the company responds.

Lineage Chief Operations Officer Jeff Rivera said at a July 9 community meeting that he was confident Lineage was on track to remove all waste by the city’s deadline.

“The mayor put an aggressive 45-day schedule, and we’re going to beat that,” Rivera said.

“We’re doing everything in our power to beat that.”

The waste is being hauled away by trucks that can hold 20 tons at once. And Ornelas Van Horne of UCLA said beyond the smells of the material they’re holding, these trucks may pose health concerns of their own, similar to those near warehouses across L.A. County and the Inland Empire.

“Obviously the cleanup is necessary, right? But with the cleanup comes things like additional diesel trucks coming into the community,” Ornelas Van Horne said. “We have a lot of documented evidence that diesel particulate matter is harmful to health, and so I think that particularly is an additional concern.”