A 'toxic tour' past rail yards, smokestacks and refineries aims to
show officials the consequences of their decisions in low-income,
predominantly Latino communities in southeast L.A.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-toxic-tour-20130728,0,6170662.story
By Tony Barboza, July 27, 3013
Go o the website for more photos and a video.
You won't find any homes of the stars on this tour bus as it shuttles rubber-necking sightseers through Los Angeles.
You may not even see the Hollywood sign through the haze
from the smokestacks, rail yards and refineries along this "toxic tour"
through neighborhoods southeast of Los Angeles.
"To your left is a brownfield," guide Roberto Cabrales announces from
the front of the bus to two dozen tourists aboard. "To your right,
that's a former steel company. It's contaminated with heavy metals."
The half-day excursions by
the advocacy group Communities for a Better Environment were begun in
1994 as a way to show a handful of government officials the consequences
of their decisions in low-income and predominantly Latino communities.
Increased demand for the tour from universities, school groups and
families now has the Huntington Park-based organization hosting hundreds
of visitors on dozens of bus trips a year. Admission is free, but
donations are sought to pay for the bus rental.
Lately, curious residents have also been climbing aboard.
Luis Reyes, a 19-year-old college student from Inglewood, brought his
two younger brothers and sister, ages 15, 11 and 13. "I want them to
understand the effects of how we live and where we live," he said.
Los Angeles is not alone in offering these kinds of excursions.
Environment-themed reality tours exist across the country, including in
the San Joaquin Valley.
The L.A. tour starts with the shuttered factories and weed-covered
lots of Huntington Park and South Gate, once a manufacturing hub.
"Under your seats there is a gas mask," jokes Cabrales, a community
organizer in plastic-rimmed glasses and a goatee who peppers his
narrative with historical references, health statistics and jocular
asides.
At Raul R. Perez Memorial Park, he shows off a playground that sits
where a five-story pile of freeway rubble from the 1994 Northridge
earthquake loomed for years, sending noxious dust into a neighborhood
that named the mound
La Montaña: The Mountain. It took years for it to be removed.
At another stop, sightseers step off the bus to watch trains rumble
through the Alameda Corridor, a below-ground trench through which
shipping containers from the nation's largest port complex in San Pedro
and Long Beach head for a massive rail yard near the 710 and 60 freeways
in Commerce.
Next they see the metal recyclers and scrap yards, where old cars and
bed frames tower high above homes that for years have complained about
the smell and noise.
As the bus crosses into Maywood, next to the almost exclusively
industrial city of Vernon, Cabrales says, "Here you can see the
residences and just how close they are to industry."
When the bus pulls up at a rendering plant in Vernon, riders give a
collective gasp. They pinch their noses and cover their mouths as a view
over the fence of Baker Commodities reveals a pile of dead dogs, a
horse carcass and animal byproducts awaiting processing.
Next is the
Exide Technologies
battery recycling plant in Vernon, where a white plume spews into the
air and Cabrales tells everyone to stay in the bus. State officials
temporarily closed the plant in April after environmental regulators
found its arsenic emissions posed a health risk to as many as 110,000
people in surrounding communities. A judge allowed the plant to reopen
earlier this month.
The bus cruises down the 710 Freeway, where tens of thousands of
trucks travel in and out of the port complex every day, putting adjacent
communities at higher risk of
asthma
and cancer. The sightseers snap photos of the shipping containers and
cranes as the driver heads toward Wilmington, an L.A. neighborhood
surrounded by several oil refineries and the Port of Los Angeles.
The group gets out of the bus on a dead-end street where rows of tidy houses sit just beyond the fence of the
ConocoPhillips
oil refinery. They see the white plumes and, above the sound of
machinery, hear about the nighttime flaring that bathes the neighborhood
in an eerie orange glow.
For lunch, the tourists stop to reflect at Wilmington Waterfront
Park. The 29 acres of trees, lawns and hills opened in 2011 as a buffer
zone between homes and the port. Still, signs warn visitors of methane
gas intrusion from the soil below.
"It really hits close to home," said Karen Díaz, a
Cal State Long Beach
student who grew up in Downey. "Had I ever gone to Wilmington and seen
the smokestacks? No. You see these things, but you drive past them."
