‘Rubble Rousers’ Fight Dump

Residents call it la montana--”the mountain”: an unsightly pile of chopped concrete from the quake-damaged Santa Monica Freeway and elsewhere, crushed asphalt and assorted other debris that dominates its environs like some immovable force of nature.

To residents of Huntington Park’s Cottage Street, a modest strip of stucco homes and apartments across the road, the dump is nothing less than a kind of biblical scourge visited upon their once-tranquil neighborhood, shattering lives, threatening people’s health and turning a long-apathetic and disenfranchised immigrant community into a hotbed of urban environmental activism.

“I call it la montana de la muerte”--”the mountain of death”--”because that’s where it’s leading us to: death,” a disgusted Teresa Hernandez said as she held a tissue to her bloody nose, one of the many ailments that residents say are caused by airborne dust from the rubble. They also complain of other common symptoms: sore throats, muscle aches, prolonged colds, skin irritation, fatigue and headaches.

The saga of la montana is a tortured tale of grass-roots environmentalism along the tattered southeastern fringes of Los Angeles, of striving immigrants standing up for their patch of the American Dream, of conflicting studies amid allegations of political favoritism.

Hernandez’s 9-year-old daughter, Ruby, whose many trophies attest to her swimming prowess, says she now lacks the vigor to keep up with her teammates. In lawns and backyards, once-flourishing gardens yield shriveled flowers and stunted fruit. A gritty, near-transparent film of dust covers parked vehicles and furniture.

To be sure, no definitive evidence links health problems to the rubble. In fact, a study last year by South Coast Air Quality Management District--the government regulatory agency that licenses the dump--failed to identify any risk.

But Communities for a Better Environment, a San Francisco-based group that has rallied neighborhood opposition, calls the report “fatally flawed” and harshly criticizes the city’s failure to conduct thorough environmental and health assessments. The group commissioned a separate study that revealed highly elevated levels of airborne particulate--dust particles as slim as one-fifth the width of a human hair, but capable of wreaking respiratory havoc, particularly for those with chronic bronchitis and asthma. Huntington Park officials rejected those findings.

Immigrant Enclave

Nonetheless, many residents of Cottage Street--an enclave populated almost entirely by immigrants from Mexico and their families--call themselves victims of “eco-racism.” Their neighborhood has been sacrificed and their well-being threatened, they contend, for the benefit of a waste entrepreneur protected by friends on the City Council.

“You think they would put something like this in Beverly Hills?” asked Ofelia Lopez, a 62-year-old grandmother who was part of a group that gathered recently in the Cottage Street apartment of Linda Marquez, across from the pile bristling with waste metal rods and concrete piping.

“We’re prisoners in our own homes,” said the slim, determined Marquez, a longtime resident who has emerged as the opposition leader.

The Huntington Park dump, says Carlos Porras of Communities for a Better Environment, underscores how a longtime policy of development without regard to consequences has left portions of southeastern Los Angeles County an environmental wasteland, suffering from its industrial heritage.

Porras, whose group concentrates on the densely populated area added: “The people on Cottage Street and other Southeast residents have been disempowered and left without a voice.”

Aggregate Recycling Systems began operations in late 1993 at the 5 1/2-acre lot, previously a used tire depot. Aggregate stores waste material from roadways and other sites, then crushes and grinds it in special machines, before reselling the scrap as road base or for other commercial uses.

Few Limitations

Huntington Park officials, eager for economic growth, issued a use permit and welcomed the business after concluding that the operation would have no significant environmental impact. Few limitations were imposed for what seemed to many people a routine matter.

But no one anticipated the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which proved a bonanza for the junk concrete business.

The site is now the unlikely resting place for quake-damaged segments of the Santa Monica Freeway. Today, city officials estimate that the mountain, which has expanded exponentially to more than 60 feet tall, contains more than 600,000 tons of debris. It sprawls over much of the lot and towers above most residences across the street.

“No one ever had any idea it would grow like it did,” said Mayor Thomas Jackson, a city councilman for almost 30 years.

The mayor and two allied council members--Rosario Marin and Raul R. Perez--downplay any link to the oft-cited illnesses. The three, a majority bloc on the five-member council, suggest that emissions from elsewhere along heavily industrialized South Alameda Street may explain the health complaints, though residents say their problems coincide with the arrival of the dump.

“There’s concrete all over the place, and I don’t see people getting sick from it,” Jackson said. Critics point out that there is a distinction between packed, hardened concrete found on roads and sidewalks to the known hazards of powdery cement dust, which may contain hazards such as lead, asbestos and silica. “I never thought it was even a big deal,” the mayor said.

Councilman Perez added: “How can you prove you got a cold because of that thing over there? . . . My house is dusty and I live two, three miles away from the pile. I think it was more of an emotional thing than anything else.”

The Invisible Intruder

Emotions certainly run high on Cottage Street, where residents live on the dump’s rear, downwind side, facing the mountain and, to the west, the railroad and the industrial swath of Alameda. Inhabitants regularly shut windows and doors tight against the invisible intruder.

That four of the five Huntington Park council members are Latinos--their victories heralded not long ago as a watershed, a people-empowering revolution--now seems to many a cautionary tale of power politics transcending ethnic identity.

“We thought when we finally elected Latinos that they would help us--but look what has happened with la montana,” said a resigned Bulemaro Olivas, a longtime resident of Cottage Street and father of three.

In the latest twist, residents are challenging the council’s unanimous approval last month of what critics term a back-door deal that ostensibly signals the end of the controversy. Under the agreement, Aggregate must clear the lot and depart by Feb. 1, 1997. The owner, Sam Chew, has agreed to cease bringing in new shipments by early May.

Yet many dwellers of Cottage Street remain suspicious. They are seeking guarantees that the rubble will be removed, a full environmental impact report and a comprehensive health survey. Supporting them is at least one councilman, Richard V. Loya, an ex-mayor and high school health science teacher, who now questions the deal that he voted to approve.

“I can see Sam Chew coming back and saying, ‘I need another six months,’ ” said Loya, a chronic bronchitis sufferer who says he once experienced a partially collapsed lung after spending 20 minutes at the site. “I smell a rat here.”

The City Council is expected to consider residents’ complaints on Monday.

Brokering the deal was Mayor Jackson, a florist who is the sole holdover from the white power structure that ruled here for decades, when Huntington Park was a comfortable bedroom community billing itself as the City of Perfect Balance--a serene image shattered when billowing smoke from the 1964 riots in nearby Watts reminded everyone of the town’s urban proximity.

“I don’t see what people are still complaining about: This guy has agreed to close up shop and leave,” Jackson said during an interview at his flower shop.

‘Vindictive’ Attitude

The mayor characterizes residents’ attitude as “vindictive.” Jackson calls Chew a friend and sometimes floral customer. But the mayor--who hopes to leave his faltering business and secure a $70,000-a-year post as assistant to the city administrator after his planned retirement from politics next year--says the business was minimal and in no way a conflict of interest.

Chew has denied any environmental problems emanating from his facility and emphasized the protective steps he has taken--such as installing a mesh screen (the mound now dwarfs it), watering the site to keep down dust, planting trees and ceasing night operations to reduce noise. Chew, whose business was slapped with $15,641 in federal and state liens last year for nonpayment of taxes, dismisses allegations that he is pocketing millions from the despoilment of a poor immigrant community.

“We’re just poor Chinese coolies trying to make a living,” Chew, who is of Chinese ancestry, said sarcastically in a brief interview at Aggregate’s offices. He declined further comment.

Councilwoman Marin, a former legislative aide in Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration and longtime acquaintance of Chew, says she worries that the controversy may be bad for business in the bustling city of 65,000, where jobs are desperately needed. “I want people to think this is a business-friendly community,” Marin said.

Nagging Suspicion

Father Roddy Gorman, a Catholic pastor who is extremely active in the anti-dump fight, is supportive of the council deal, which he was instrumental in crafting.

“Sammy Chew is gone,” said the Irish-born priest, pastor of St. Matthias Roman Catholic Church and a senior leader of United Neighborhoods Organization, an Eastside activist group.

Despite the priest’s assertion, Councilman Loya and many residents of Cottage Street harbor a nagging suspicion. They fear that Aggregate plans to use the site for debris gouged from the Alameda Corridor project, the massive planned industrial development stretching from Los Angeles to Long Beach. Such speculation is groundless, say Councilman Perez, a real estate broker and member of the Alameda project authority, and Jackson, a past authority president.

Yet the rumors persist--particularly since fliers emerged offering the Huntington Park site for recycling of “nonhazardous” soils contaminated with diesel fuel and oil.

“Why wouldn’t they put all the junk from Alameda here?” asked Linda Marquez, seated in her dimly lit, second-story flat on a sunny morning, windows sealed from the ubiquitous phantom dust. “They’ve already turned our street into a dump.”

Times correspondent Monica Valencia contributed to this story.