California’s biggest environmental cleanup leaves lead contamination and frustration
By Tony Briscoe, Jessica Garrison, Aida YlananFeb. 10, 2023 4 AM PT
A person wearing protective gloves uses a tool to remove soil from the ground.
Guadalupe Valdovinos uses a probe to collect a soil sample from her family’s backyard in East Los Angeles.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
California’s largest and most expensive environmental cleanup has failed to properly remove lead pollution from some homes and neighborhoods near a notorious battery recycler in southeast Los Angeles County, leaving residents at continued risk, a Times investigation shows.
Six years after the California Department of Toxic Substances Control embarked on a massive remediation effort around the shuttered Exide plant, numerous homes targeted for cleanup have been left with concentrations in excess of state health standards.
In findings shared exclusively with The Times, researchers at USC and Occidental College reported that they had tested surface soil from the yards of 93 remediated homes and found 73 had at least one sample with lead concentrations over the California health threshold of 80 parts per million. They also found that 22 of the homes had at least one sample that tested over 400 parts per million, the federal limit.
The high lead concentrations have raised serious questions about the department’s oversight of the $750-million project — as well as its commitment to making these predominantly Latino and historically underserved neighborhoods safe from a brain-damaging metal.
The Times investigation into the cleanup also found:
* Contractors have failed to meet the state standards in more than 500 of 3,370 cleaned properties near the shuttered Vernon plant, according to toxics agency records. Guidelines call for contractors to remove soil until the lead concentration is below 80 parts per million, or to dig down 18 inches, before putting clean soil on top.
* Contractors have violated environmental regulations designed to protect residents from the potent neurotoxin during the cleanup. Violations include allowing toxic dust to migrate into neighboring yards and amassing lead-saturated soil on the same block as a Huntington Park preschool that was in session, according to citations issued by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
* The state has yet to offer a plan for cleaning lead-contaminated parkways that lie just beyond the sidewalks in affected neighborhoods — areas that have resulted in at least one documented case of lead poisoning.
* Los Angeles County prosecutors said they are investigating the possible illegal dumping of contaminated soils taken from the cleanup site and deposited in a nonhazardous waste landfill in Azusa.
Officials with the state Department of Toxic Substances Control have acknowledged missteps, but say many of those issues have been addressed. They say the agency is forging ahead with work to remove lead from another 1,500 properties by 2025.
“We don’t claim to have gotten everything right on this critical project,” said Meredith Williams, the agency’s director since 2019. “There was no blueprint based on similar projects that could inform our work. ... I’m not sure any state department or agency anywhere in the country would have gotten there.”
Not everyone in the community agrees.
“I’m just disgusted. Just disgusted with the whole process,” said Msgr. John Moretta, pastor of Resurrection Catholic Church in Boyle Heights, who has led his community in fighting pollution in the neighborhood for decades. He called the state’s oversight of Exide and the cleanup “disgraceful.”
Los Angeles County Supervisors Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn, who represent the affected communities, are now calling for an audit to explain why residents are still living with lead.
“These people thought that they had a clean bill of health and, in fact, they don’t,” Hahn said. “We will not be happy until we know that these homes have been cleaned up — for good.”
Added Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass: “This community has suffered for so long, and a proper cleanup is long overdue.”
Three people in white lab coats stand in a backyard.
From left, Maru Garcia, project head for Prospering backyards, David Valdez, founder of Tawa Compost Food Rescue, and Aaron Celestian, a curator at the L.A. County Natural History Museum, prepare a soil testing site in Guadalupe Valdovinos’ backyard in East Los Angeles.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The enduring presence of lead has unnerved residents with young children, including Guadalupe Valdovinos, who has a 13-year-old daughter and a son who will turn 2 in March.
At her family’s home in unincorporated East Los Angeles, state-led soil testing found lead concentrations in her yard as high as 608 parts per million — more than seven times higher than California health standards.
Valdovinos said she had been looking forward to the remediaton that began in October 2019 so her daughter could play outside again. But when workers arrived, they refused to excavate the front yard, due to the presence of large agave plants, she said. They also balked at digging up a narrow strip of soil near the home’s fence-line, saying it wasn’t detailed in the cleanup plans.
Eventually, they did the work. But Valdovinos — who was so concerned about the toxic effects of lead that she had waited for her home to be remediated before having her second child — couldn’t shake her unease.
Last year, she asked scientists running a lead-testing initiative, Prospering backyards, to retest her property. They discovered a portion of her yard still contained soil with a lead concentration of 543 parts per million.
A toddler runs in the backyard of a home.
Thaddeus Diaz, who will turn 2 in March, runs in the backyard of his family’s home in East Los Angeles. His mother, Guadalupe Valdovinos, said she closely supervises her children outdoorsafter she discovered a portion of her yard still contained soil with a high lead concentration.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Now every day is an exercise in contamination control: Shoes are removed before coming indoors to avoid tracking in toxic dirt, floors and countertops are cleaned incessantly, the children are watched closely on the rare occasion they go outside to play.
“My daughter refuses to come out,” Valdovinos said. “She’s sad. She’s like, ‘Why don’t we just move, Mom?’ And I’m like, ‘We can’t take your grandparents. This is their home. They worked hard to transform it into what it is now and they’re proud of it.”
“She’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty — but it’s full of lead.”