The California Department of Toxic Substances Control says it has issued 72 violations, to the Chemical Waste Management facility in Kettleman City for failing to report hazardous waste spills on its property. The facility is located in western Kings County.
The department says it has referred the case to the California Attorney General’s Office.
Fines, if imposed at the maximum rate, could add up to about $1.8 million.
“The alleged violations are about reporting protocols for small spills that occur at our facility. The issue arises from our own internal spill reports all of and the fact that DTSC thinks we are required to notify them of small spills,” the company says in a written statement…
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There were 72 violations cited by state officials, dating back to August of 2008, with the most recent occurring less than a month ago, on October 22nd.
State officials say Chem Waste failed to properly notify them of hazardous spills on its Kettleman Hills property.
There have been over 70 spills in the last four years. Most are about 1 to 5 gallons.
Central California hazardous waste dump that has been targeted by fines and claims by nearby residents involving birth defects has another headache: The state has issued 72 violations alleging small spills went unreported during the past four years.
Chemical Waste Management operates the largest hazardous waste landfill west of the Mississippi River at a remote site near Kettleman City, a farmworker community midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
State officials said the spills were relatively small, posed no health threats to the public, and were contained on the property, but the company’s operating permit requires it to notify the California Department of Toxic Substances Control each time such spills occur.
The largest toxic waste landfill in the West failed to report 72 spills to regulators over a five-year period and now faces heavy fines, the Department of Toxic Substances Control said Thursday.
The case has been referred to the state Attorney General’s Office to decide how much to levy and if more sanctions are warranted. Each violation could result in a fine of up to $25,000.
Waste Management Inc. can keep its Kettleman Hills hazardous waste landfill open because “there is no evidence to suggest that the landfill’s violations posed any danger to nearby communities or workers at the facility or the environment,” the department said in a statement.
But the company’s application for expansion — it’s running out of room and has cut incoming shipments — will stay on hold until regulators are satisfied that no more spills will take place, said Brian Johnson, the department’s head of enforcement.
“Spills are not supposed to occur,” Johnson said…
Kettleman City residents and their environmental justice allies applaud the Department of Toxic Substances Control for taking enforcement action today against Chemical Waste Management for failing to report 72 toxic spills that took place over 5 years at the controversial Kettleman Hills hazardous waste landfill between 2008 and 2012.
The announcement of years of violations by chronic polluter Chemical Waste Management comes just a few days after another young Kettleman City child died of leukemia, adding to the growing count of infants and adults who have died or suffered serious health impacts in this heavily polluted Central Valley town.
As they did last month, frustrated and angry Armona residents swamped the Armona Community Services District meeting Tuesday night to voice their ongoing concern about high water bills.
Residents in this low-income, overwhelmingly Hispanic community are paying water bills of $200 or higher, and they are demanding answers.
District board members, trying to explain through a volunteer translating their words into Spanish, said the bills include debt payments incurred to finance water treatment for arsenic standards imposed by the federal government in 2006.
The expensive treatments, which are forcing the community to drill a new well to find cleaner water, have caused the district to borrow money that the town’s approximately 1,350 households can ill afford.
Background
Few studies of environmental justice examine inequities in drinking water contamination. Those studies that have done so usually analyze either disparities in exposure/harm or inequitable implementation of environmental policies. The US EPA’s 2001 Revised Arsenic Rule, which tightened the drinking water standard for arsenic from 50 ug/L to 10 ug/L, offers an opportunity to analyze both aspects of environmental justice.
Conclusions
We found that higher arsenic levels and higher odds of receiving an MCL violation were most common in CWSs serving predominantly socio-economically disadvantaged communities. Our findings suggest that communities with greater proportions of low SES residents not only face disproportionate arsenic exposures, but unequal MCL compliance challenges.
Impoverished, rural towns are stuck for years with tainted drinking water as they wade through a cryptic state process for public funding to fix the problem.
That must stop, say two frustrated lawmakers. Assembly Members Henry T. Perea, D-Fresno, and Luis Alejo, D-Watsonville, this week will start a streamlining effort that probably will result in several new bills next year.
“We’re getting pretty fed up,” said Perea, who has worked for funding in such Tulare County towns as Seville, Monson, Cutler and Orosi. “We might want to consolidate this process.”
Like most children, the students at Stone Corral Elementary School here rejoice when the bell rings for recess and delight in christening a classroom pet.
But while growing up in this impoverished agricultural community of numbered roads and lush citrus orchards, young people have learned a harsh life lesson: “No tomes el agua!” — “Don’t drink the water!”
Seville, with a population of about 300, is one of dozens of predominantly Latino unincorporated communities in the Central Valley plagued for decades by contaminated drinking water. It is the grim result of more than half a century in which chemical fertilizers, animal wastes, pesticides and other substances have infiltrated aquifers, seeping into the groundwater and eventually into the tap. An estimated 20 percent of small public water systems in Tulare County are unable to meet safe nitrate levels, according to a United Nations representative.
Carlos and Naomi Chavez have lived in Seville for 70 years. One thing has stayed the same in all those years, the tap water.
Carlos Chavez said, “We use it to wash dishes only and take a shower.”
It isn’t safe to drink because it’s contaminated with nitrates. Maria Herrera with the Community Water Center blames the old water system. She says the pipes are rusty and some are broken and exposed above ground. “It’s pretty much third world conditions here in Seville.”