Wilmington Turns Up Its Nose at Pollution Report

For Wilmington residents, who live near six oil refineries and the largest sewage treatment plant in the county, if it’s not one smell, it’s another.

Frustration over odors from the refineries and the sewage plant spilled out at a meeting Thursday after about 50 residents heard sewage treatment officials describe their latest efforts to control pollution at the plant in nearby Carson.

“We can’t breathe,” complained Roxanne Lawrence, a teacher at Wilmington Junior High School. “We inhale Unocal, Fletcher, Kellogg, the sewage plant. It feels like slivers going in our tongues. . . . The air stinks.”

Sanitation officials presented graphs showing that populations of Dover sole, pelicans and kelp returned to healthy levels after DDT concentrations in sewage dropped in the mid-1980s. But residents paid more attention to plans to begin burning 600 tons of sewage sludge a day in 1992 when a $165-million waste-to-energy installation starts up at the plant.

“You know, we’re all concerned about the pelican and the kelp, and it’s fantastic what you are doing,” said Peter Mendoza, president of Wilmington Home Owners, which sponsored the meeting.

“But a not-so-subtle problem is the odor. . . . The industries should do as much for the people as they are doing for the fish.”

Officials said they recognize that odors from the plant are annoying but pointed out that air pollution emissions are much lower than they were 10 to 15 years ago.

Powerlessness was a common theme at the meeting. A number of residents noted that some of the plants whose emissions can be smelled in Wilmington are regulated by other jurisdictions.

The Shell, Unocal, Ultramar and Texaco refineries all are in Wilmington, but the Arco and Fletcher refineries and Kellogg Supply Inc., which composts sewage sludge to produce fertilizer, are in Carson, just to the north.

The most odorous facility, the sewage plant, also is in Carson. It is operated by the County Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, an agency that does not answer to any one municipality.

“What happens there blows into Wilmington. . . . It isn’t our realm to say (the plant) should be gone,” said Joanne Wysocki, vice president of Wilmington Home Owners. “They are in a separate jurisdiction. We could write a letter, but it would fall on deaf ears.”

Michael Moshiri, sewage engineer for the agency, said emissions from the plant have been greatly reduced during the past 10 to 15 years because of two factors:

The plant cut by three-fourths the amount of sludge laid out in an open field to compost. In addition, the plant switched from piston to turbine engines for operating pumps, a move that improved energy efficiency and reduced emissions.

Moshiri said he remembered the period when composting, which is operated by Kellogg, was running at much higher levels than today. “You couldn’t breathe,” he said.

To reduce emissions further, the agency intends to enclose the composting field and “scrub” gases from the compost. “I believe in the next few years, you should not be able to detect odors,” he said.

But when the waste-to-energy installation that is now under construction begins operating in 1992, Moshiri said, air pollution from the plant will increase--and with it some of the odor-causing emissions of sulfur oxides that neighbors find so annoying. Nonetheless, he said, the new pollution levels will still be far below the previous levels.

In addition, he said one-third of the new emissions will be offset on a regional basis by reductions in pollution from trucks that now are used to haul sludge to the Puente Hills landfill.

Moshiri presented charts of daily emissions showing that the plant now releases about as much pollution as the Fletcher refinery and traffic on a mile of the Harbor Freeway. One table showed that the pollution level will remain comparable after the new installation is operating. By contrast, he said, the Arco refinery releases about 10 times the amount of pollution as the sewage plant.

As the meeting ended, Wysocki said that publicity surrounding today’s Earth Day observance had undoubtedly contributed to the turnout at the meeting, which was held at the Banning Park Recreation Center.

“Ecology is in,” she said.

But she quickly added that local conditions had made the environment an unavoidable concern among Wilmington residents “a long time ago.”