Battery recycling plant in Vernon ordered to cut emissions

[hunter]

The order from the South Coast Air Quality Management District comes after recent tests showed that Exide Technologies is posing a health danger to as many as 110,000 people in neighboring cities.

By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2013, 8:05 p.m.

A battery recycling plant in Vernon is being told to reduce its emissions after recent tests showed it is posing a danger to as many as 110,000 people living in an area that extends from Boyle Heights to Maywood and Huntington Park.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District announced late Friday that Exide Technologies, one of the largest battery recyclers in the world, must also hold public meetings later this spring to inform residents that they face an increased cancer risk and outline steps being taken to reduce it.

Air district officials said Exide's most recent assessment showed a higher cancer risk affecting a larger number of residents than any other of the more than 450 regulated facilities in Southern California over the 25-year history of a program to monitor toxic air contaminants. The primary contaminant in this case was arsenic.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0324-exide-air-20130324,0,2002688.story

If a nuclear power plant was found to be spewing similar levels of carcinogens the headline alone would cover half the front page of newspapers all over the nation.

No this is not a "pro-nuclear" post, just an observation.

Lead acid batteries are dangerous.

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1. Vernon: "a criminal enterprise posing as a city government"

"Until the Bell scandal, local government had largely escaped the disdain that voters reserve for Washington and Sacramento. Bell undermined confidence in the checks and balances that normally prevent a corrupt regime from maintaining control of a local entity.

Belatedly, the exposure of the Rizzo regime in Bell brought renewed scrutiny to the brazen corruption in adjacent Vernon, creating an opportunity to abolish an essentially criminal enterprise posing as a city government. Assembly Speaker John A. Perez has introduced a bill to unincorporate cities with fewer than 150 residents. There is only one in California: Vernon.

While residents and the media could plausibly claim ignorance of what was going on at Bell City Hall, Vernon has never made any pretense of normal governance. Founded as a family fiefdom, it has remained so for a century. John Leonis, Vernon's co-founder, served 45 years on its City Council. His grandson, Leonis Mahlberg, served 53."

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/27/opinion/la-oe-cole-vernon-20101227

I bought the batteries for my electric car in Vernon in 2008. An unregulated, industrial hellhole.