San Francisco Bay Guardian

Wednesday, November 7th, 2001

For more information, contact:

Sue Chiang Greenaction

(415) 248-5010

Hold Your Breath

Activists attempt to shutter an Oakland incinerator and simultaneously set the stage for a fight with national implications

BY A. C. Thompson

IN THE INDUSTRIAL flatlands of east Oakland, sandwiched between the dilapidated Victorians of Fruitvale and the posh waterfront homes of Alameda, sits an undistinguished beige warehouse. Twin smokestacks jut skyward from the roof of the building, home to Integrated Environmental Systems (IES), California's only medical-waste incineration company.
What the trucks trundling down High Street are hauling to the facility is no secret--it's mostly hospital garbage: IV bags, used syringes, outdated pharmaceuticals, rubber gloves, and the like.

The mystery, at least for neighbors, is what, precisely, is coming out of the stacks -- and whether the fumes could threaten their health. Environmentalists have long argued that IES, by burning PVC-type plastic, is unleashing dangerous amounts of dioxin, a cancer-causing chlorine compound thought by many scientists to be the most virulent carcinogen ever discovered.

Until recently, Louise Lampkin taught at Oakland's Lazear Elementary School, located less than a mile downwind of IES. Now on medical leave due to metastasized breast cancer, Lampkin worries about her former students. "A lot of times I'd be with the children in the yard, and the smell from the incinerator -- oh my goodness, it's a smell you wouldn't want to smell," she said. "The children would hold their noses and gasp. I'm worried about dioxin making them sick."

For the past half-decade activists like Lampkin have pressured authorities to shutter IES, which repeatedly has been busted for air pollution violations. They've written adjective-loaded letters. They've held heated meetings with government officials. They've blockaded the gates of the plant.

And in the process this neighborhood skirmish has become a battle with national ramifications: a victory for greens could hand activists across America a new legal tool to combat scofflaw companies.

In 1990 the first President George Bush, under congressional pressure, amended the federal Clean Air Act. One key provision, Title V, created a nationwide permitting program: henceforth poison-belching industrial facilities would need a federal operating permit, a move designed to standardize air pollution rules and curb nasty smokestack spew. At the time Title V was touted as a significant crackdown on earth-wrecking industries. The Title V permits lay out all of the air pollution regulations, both state and federal, a business must follow. Companies that can't or won't guarantee adherence to those regulations can be denied a permit. Without a permit to operate, a business is effectively dead.

To date, however, no business, no matter how poor its safety record, has been denied a Title V permit -- making the law look like the proverbial rubber stamp. "As far as we know, no facility has had its Title V permit turned down," said Keri Powell, an attorney with New York Public Interest Research Group and a nationally recognized expert on the law.

This is where Lampkin and other activists come in. Environmental authorities announced in 1999 that IES would be required to apply for a Title V permit, and since then activists, spearheaded by San Francisco-based Greenaction, have battled to make sure the incinerator doesn't get one.

The Title V process has two tiers: First, regional air-pollution regulators, in this case the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), must draw up and issue the permit (or decide not to issue one). Then the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must sign off. Greens are urging both agencies to make an example out of IES and reject the company's application.

If regulators here pull the plug on IES, environmentalists figure it could set off a trend, spurring regulators in other states to deny permits to problem businesses. Should the agencies give IES the go-ahead, greens say they'll go to court to nullify the permit -- and a legal victory would set a precedent for activists across the country. "I know we're watching this case very carefully, as is headquarters," said Jack Broadbent, the regional chief of EPA's air division.

If there's one company that deserves to have its license to operate yanked, it's IES, activists contend. A hardened recidivist, the company has been in trouble constantly for the past 10 years. Since 1996 the facility has been busted by BAAQMD inspectors at least 103 times, giving it one of the longest rap sheets in the state.

"It's a complete mockery of reality to pretend that IES will abide by the law," Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction, said. "The air district shouldn't give them a permit."

In early August the Bay Guardian sent BAAQMD a written request for public records revealing the specifics of those failed inspections: what laws the company broke, how much it paid out in fines, etc. Several months later we still haven't been able to pry much information out of the air district.

From the few documents we've been able to obtain and interviews with BAAQMD employees who wish to remain unnamed, it's clear the company has repeatedly surpassed air pollution limits, sometimes because of malfunctioning equipment. This is where the dioxin question takes center stage.

Studies done by BAAQMD in the late 1990s show that when the incinerator is running smoothly the plant emits minuscule amounts of dioxin. What these studies don't indicate is how much dioxin is wafting out of the stacks when the machinery breaks down, as it routinely does.

It's not just IES's equipment that's trouble-plagued. On June 13, 2001, the California Department of Health Services, which oversees the disposal of hospital trash, shut down IES for 30 days after inspectors uncovered literally thousands of transgressions. According to health department documents, IES failed to maintain proper tracking records, mishandled 1,470 barrels of biohazardous waste, spilled bloody pathogenic material on the floor ... and didn't bother to clean up the mess.

Just last week the company wrote out a staggering $925,000 check to settle the case. The problems don't stop there. In September 2001 the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health slapped IES with $22,500 in fines for breaking worker safety laws, such as failing to vaccinate employees against hepatitis. The disease, which can be fatal, is a major risk for workers who spend their days lugging around boxes of spent syringes. For IES, shelling out $22K was an improvement. In 2000 the same agency pummeled the company with $42,000 in penalties.

Not surprisingly, IES is defensive about its inspection record. "The company has worked for the last several years with a number of regulatory agencies to address whatever issues are being brought before IES," Jay Silverberg, a company spokesperson, said. "In all cases we've been cooperative. In the case of the air district specifically, there have been compliance issues raised by the regulators -- many, many, many of those issues have not been related to emissions from the facility. They were paperwork violations, monitoring lights, a back-up system that needed to be checked, etc. In every case IES stepped up, addressed the issue, and moved on."

IES has consistently denied that it is emitting hazardous amounts of dioxin. If Angel was serious about cleaning up the environment, Silverberg says, he would pick better targets -- like the black clouds billowing out of the tailpipes of buses and big rigs. "Bradley Angel is misguided, if not pandering to peoples' worst fears."

In an interview, the Bay Guardian asked Peter Hess, a deputy air-pollution control officer at the air district, about IES's future. An upper-echelon official at the agency, Hess had few kind words for the company. "They've got a massive noncompliance problem," Hess said. "Sometimes they do things that are extraordinarily stupid." Still, Hess expects to grant the company a permit -- loaded with strict conditions -- within the next six months. Angel welcomes that challenge: "The minute they grant the permit, we will go to court to stop it."

Meanwhile, Lampkin wonders if she'll ever return to the classroom. And she wonders how she contracted the disease that may take her life. "I can tell you this," she said, "there are a lot of people around here that have cancer."