Posted on 03/30/2006 9:46:16 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Los Angeles may have the distinction of offering celebrity home tours. But in the Inland area, gray air and bubbling ooze are just a bus ride away.
Tour participants can view a treatment facility for the Stringfellow acid pits in Glen Avon, breathe the particles in the air near a distribution facility in Mira Loma and see the proposed site for warehouse space next to a residential community where young children play.
About 45 county officials, labor leaders and community members took part in the Riverside County tour offered by the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice in Jurupa.
The invitation-only toxic tour can be expanded to include railroad yards and contaminated water wells in San Bernardino County, but it stuck with a Riverside County focus on Wednesday to let officials see first-hand the effect that industrial contaminants have in the community, said program director Rachel Lopez.
The tours are offered a few times a year to local government officials and community stakeholders, Lopez said. The community organization plans soon to offer the unique local tour to the public.
"They need to see things through our window," she said. "It makes a significant difference when they get to see how these things are affecting the community."
The Inland area is home to several landmarks, including the Mission Inn, but it also has the distinction of having the highest levels of particulate pollution in the nation, Lopez said.
The Stringfellow pits are one of the most toxic sites in the nation, and the truck traffic has given the Inland region the fourth worst air quality in the world, behind cities in Indonesia and Thailand, said Penny Newman, executive director of the community organization.
"We are right up there with Third World countries," Newman said.
Not the most brag-worthy distinctions but making a tour of the toxic sites in the region helps the community understand the effect it has on local residents.
"You see how close those trucks are to the (playing) fields at the high school. Most of those students walk around with inhalers," Lopez said. "You see how only a wall separates those homes from the warehouses."
Brad Gollnick works for Union Pacific and attended the tour as a union representative. The biggest shock for him was seeing the effect his company had on local schoolchildren.
"Until you see it, you can't grasp the damage that it can do to high school students," he said.
The community organization has fought for the cleanup of the Stringfellow acid pits, a dumping ground for toxic chemicals from 1956 to 1973.
The group is also working with developers and county officials to provide a buffer zone between six proposed warehouses near Mira Loma Village, a 101-home residential area in a predominately Latino neighborhood, Lopez said.
Another of its concerns is the proximity of a truck entrance into the Union Pacific Railroad distribution center to the sports field at neighboring Jurupa Valley High School.
The organization doesn't oppose economic development but wants to make sure it doesn't negatively affect the lives of the low-income residents throughout the region, Lopez said.
From a ventilated bus, tour participants watched diesel trucks roll past the back of Jurupa Valley High's sport fields, where students were walking around during a lunch break.
"There are lines full of trucks that are there every morning," said 17-year-old Rory Payne. "We are used to them."
Union Pacific was unaware that its site was on the toxic tour, but it is working with car manufacturers to let their truck drivers know ways to reduce their effects on the community, said Lupe Valdez, the company's director of public policy and community affairs.
These include asking them not to drive through residential areas and not to leave trucks idling, she said.
Richard Villines took the tour on behalf of the United Transportation Union and works for Union Pacific Railroad. As workers, he said, they understand the risk to their own health but have never really contemplated the effect on the neighboring community.
Villines said he decided one thing after the 90-minute tour.
"I'm going to move," he quipped.
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