Sun Valley residents are fed up with recycling facility pollution. Can a California bill help?

Hector Gonzalez bought his home in Sun Valley expecting to raise his children there. He knew of industrial facilities nearby, but loved the park across the street and the quiet neighborhood.

Three years later, Gonzalez says, he’s being driven out by the constant dust that coats streets and cars, as well as odors and noise he believes are from a concrete recycling company just a few hundred yards from his house. He wants to move his wife and three kids — who are 2, 12 and 15 — to another part of L.A.

“Our primary concern is what we're actually breathing,” Gonzalez said. “There's a lack of clarity to us as residents. … How is this being regulated? Who is really in charge of monitoring all of this, and how is this even allowed?”

Who’s in charge?

Sun Valley, a predominantly Latino, working-class community, is also home to a concentration of industrial operations, including what are called aggregate recycling facilities. There are more than 320 such facilities across Southern California.

These operations serve an important purpose — crushing materials such as gravel, concrete, asphalt and brick from construction and demolition so those materials can then be recycled and reused. (Though, as LAist has documented, it isn’t always properly recycled.)

But the large piles of this crushed material also release dust that often coats nearby homes, businesses and schools. The dust that blows off these piles, called PM10, can worsen asthma and other respiratory issues. It’s particularly hard on the lungs of children and older residents, and such pollution has been linked to more emergency room visits, especially for illnesses like asthma.

That air pollution occurs in something of a regulatory loophole.

The state agency CalRecycle oversees waste operations, but not this kind: these “inert debris” recycling facilities are exempt from many regulations that other types of solid waste operations, such as landfills, are subject to. While CalRecycle has regulations for how the material should be processed, it doesn’t enforce air pollution standards.

Young people play soccer next to an aggregate recycling facility — its open air pile looming in the background — in Sun Valley.

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Courtesy Mayahuel Hernandez

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“CalRecycle regulates solid waste facilities, including transfer and processing sites, where material is separated for both recycling and disposal,” Chris McSwain, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement to LAist. “This does not include inert debris recycling facilities, which handle material that has been separated for reuse and is not intended for disposal.”

The South Coast Air Quality Management District is tasked with permitting and enforcing air pollution from such facilities, along with thousands of other industrial operations in the region. The agency conducts inspections, but primarily relies on reports from community members about potential violations.

Outdated rules

The AQMD uses several rules to regulate air pollution from such facilities, but one of the main ones is Rule 1157, which requires certain dust control measures at aggregate recycling facilities, including requiring these operations to be at least 300 feet from homes and schools.

That rule hasn't been updated since 2006. And Sun Valley residents have been raising the alarm about the pollution they’re breathing in for decades.

Mariam Moore, a Sun Valley resident who lives just over that distance from an aggregate recycling facility, said the current regulations don’t go far enough. Moore and other Sun Valley residents are part of two lawsuits filed earlier this year against that facility, AMH Recycling, for its role in the neighborhood’s pollution. AMH declined to comment for this story, citing pending litigation.

“The scary thing is that these pollutants are visible and tangible,” Moore wrote in an email to LAist. “Residents often report that dust is so thick it can be tasted in the air, and it persists even when the facility is not operating. Families face difficult choices between allowing children to play outside and protecting their health.”

The aggregate recycling facility next door to Mariam Moore's house in Sun Valley.

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Courtesy Mariam Moore

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An air filter at Mariam Moore's house was already dirty less than two weeks after being inserted into her air purifier.

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Courtesy Mariam Moore

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She worries the pollution will only worsen with ongoing cleanup after the January fires. In the meantime, Moore hopes a new bill moving through the California Legislature will add stronger protections long-term. That bill, SB 526 from Sen. Caroline Menjivar, whose district includes Sun Valley, would require the AQMD to boost its enforcement and add further protections for residents, including:

• Fencing around the entire property that must be at least 6 inches taller than the tallest open air debris pile.
• A height restriction of 8 feet for open storage piles if facilities are within 500 feet of sensitive locations, such as homes, schools and hospitals.
• Establishing a fence-line monitoring system to monitor PM10 emissions in real time. 
• If those emissions exceed a certain threshold set by South Coast AQMD, the facility will be required to stop operations and implement dust mitigation measures.

“A couple of these facilities in Sun Valley, they're located literally 301 feet away, so just outside of that setback zone,” said Ian Bertrando, a UCLA Law student who helped write the new bill with Menjivar’s office. “That clearly is still too close for comfort for nearby residences.”

Mayahuel Hernandez, another law student who worked on the bill, said the current regulations were developed before there was the current understanding of PM10’s effects on health.

“It's not considered a hazardous waste, and so it should be treated differently, but we now know that there are serious health hazards to particulate matter pollution and it should be regulated more strictly,” Hernandez said.

The bill passed the Senate floor and is pending referral to the Assembly.

AQMD’s response

In a letter to Menjivar in response to the bill, AQMD Executive Officer Wayne Nastri promised to “begin rulemaking efforts immediately” to update Rule 1157 and increase enforcement with “robust field operations in Sun Valley.”

Nastri wrote the agency hopes that promise will be enough to prevent SB 526 from moving forward.

“While legislation can be effective in certain circumstances, it also can set a precedent which could impact South Coast AQMD’s ability to effectively regulate sources of air pollution,” Nastri wrote.

In an email to LAist, a spokesperson for the agency said their primary concern with the bill is that it would be too prescriptive and potentially hinder their ability to regulate pollution from these sites. The agency argues that going through their specific rulemaking process would be more effective.

"If SB 526 were signed into law, it would prescribe specific measures that may need to be adjusted later through future legislation before rulemaking could take place," Rainbow Yeung, a spokesperson for the AQMD, wrote in an email to LAist. "This could delay amendments to South Coast AQMD rules for aggregate recycling."

A spokesperson for Menjivar’s office wrote in an email to LAist that “the Senator is optimistic that South Coast AQMD will fulfill their promise to address this issue, hopefully mitigating the need for the bill to move forward.”

Meanwhile, residents continue to live with the dust. And some, like Gonzalez, are feeling the only choice left is to leave.

“We deserve better air quality,” Gonzalez said. “Just because we live in a disenfranchised neighborhood doesn't mean that we don't deserve better air.”