Neighbors Say High-Tech Firm Brings High Risk

It’s a respected high-tech firm whose value increased thirty-fold in a year and is rapidly growing out of its headquarters in Alhambra.

But Ortel Corp.--now a branch of Lucent Technologies--also uses some of the world’s deadliest gases, and it’s moving to a site in Irwindale that sits within 1,300 feet of two schools and a residential area. The company’s current plans say a worst-case gas release would spread a toxic cloud more than 3,600 feet.

Political and business leaders fought hard to keep the high-profile company in the region. Irwindale officials were so anxious to lure Ortel last fall that they didn’t take advice from their own consultant and a county fire supervisor. Both recommended that the city fully assess the risks of an accident to residents in neighboring Baldwin Park before issuing a use permit, records show.

The city granted that permit in November, though company officials must still provide information on how to manage the risks before they can begin operations.

Now, those neighbors in Baldwin Park say they are outraged, convinced that their area was picked because they are mostly Spanish-speaking and lack the money to file a lawsuit.

“If we had the money to hire a lawyer, we could get rid of this project,” said Silvano Juarez, who owns a small home on nearby Olive Street and has several young children. “But we don’t.”

The controversy underscores an evolving debate over so-called “clean” industry--high-tech manufacturers without smokestacks that have traditionally located close to homes and schools. Often cities actively court such companies, offering tax incentives and other perks to keep the jobs, prestige and revenues in town. As more people have become aware of the dangerous chemicals used inside the plants, officials in some areas have tightened regulations and tried to drive the facilities deeper into industrial areas.

But economic development officials say there is a shortage of vacant industrial space in Los Angeles County, making it difficult to find areas far removed from families and schools. Supporters of the Ortel project, including Assemblyman Martin Gallegos (D-Baldwin Park) and the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., add that the hazards of a toxic gas release at the site are minimal and outweighed by the prospects of new jobs.

No one disputes that Ortel, which was bought by Lucent in April for $2.95 billion, has an excellent safety record and state-of-the-art measures to control the toxic gases--arsine, phosphine and silane. Both the air quality district and Cal/OSHA officials say the company has had few, if any, problems.

Used to manufacture pellet-sized computer chips, the chemicals are common in the semiconductor industry and will be constantly monitored inside a sealed gas cabinet in a storage room, company officials say. A 55-person fire and emergency team will be on staff, and ventilation to the outside will be immediately shut down if there is a leak or rupture.

Lucent officials stressed that the amount of the gases will be relatively small and will pose no real risk to residents. And they add there is a growing number of state safety measures, including new provisions in the fire code, that they must comply with.

“To meet those requirements, you really have to be the safest facility that could possibly be,” said Mark Kanipe, head facilities manager at the plant.

Some experts and industry watchdogs warn there’s no guarantee against an accident, which would more likely occur when the gases are delivered to the plant than when they are stored inside. They add that even a small release of arsine--the most dangerous of the substances--can be catastrophic.

“No community is adequately prepared to handle the major disaster that could result from the rupture of a metal cylinder containing arsine gas,” wrote Dr. Joseph LaDou, head of environmental health at UC San Francisco Medical School, in a major study on the semiconductor industry in 1984.

In an interview, LaDou said the amount of chemicals at the facility are enough to pose a serious hazard to the community and should warrant a full environmental impact report, which Irwindale officials decided not to require.

Arsine, used to etch the chips, attacks every organ in the body and causes instant death by freezing the hemoglobin in blood. He added that 20 pounds of pure arsine--the amount Lucent will keep on site--released in a closed ventilating system would kill everyone in the building. In the open air, it could pose a serious danger to people several thousand feet away.

“It’s probably the most dangerous gas used in industry,” LaDou said.

Said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: “That’s a huge amount of arsine. I don’t think anybody would argue that it’s a good idea to put that concentration of arsine in close proximity with a neighborhood--or particularly kids.”

Lucent’s current plans for its Alhambra site say a worst-case release of 10 pounds of arsine would spread a toxic cloud more than 3,600 feet. Phosphine, which attacks the nervous system and lungs, would cover 3,100 feet.

In Irwindale, the new plant, which would hold twice that amount of arsine, would sit 1,240 feet from Olive Middle School and 1,290 feet from Walnut Elementary School, both in Baldwin Park. There are no Irwindale residents close to the site.

The Sierra Club is researching the Lucent issue and contemplating legal action on behalf of the Baldwin Park residents.

“Would this have happened in West L.A?” asked Jim Blumquist, the group’s Southern California representative. “We feel the company and the city of Irwindale have not been very straightforward with the risks to the community. It’s an example of how the laws on the books don’t seem to be working to protect children and parents from industrial hazards.”

Such chemicals used by the semiconductor industry have become increasingly controversial in the last two decades.

In the late 1980s, San Diego County residents protested and shut down an arsine manufacturer that used more than 2,000 pounds of the chemical on site. In the early 1990s, cities in Santa Clara County passed the Toxic Gas Ordinance, which included strict measures on how to handle and monitor such chemicals.

Safeguarding the Children

A chip plant in the city of Santa Clara, with similar quantities of chemicals as Lucent--though no arsine--sued a school that moved in next door to them in 1993. The company, LSI Logic, thought the location was far too dangerous.

“We have a good safety record,” said Kevin Brett, spokesman for LSI Logic. “But you still have delivery trucks. Do we have any control over delivery trucks? Can I give you a 100% guarantee that over 50 years, there will never be a problem? No.”

To safeguard the children, the Santa Clara school is specially equipped to seal shut if a toxic gas cloud rolls by. The company is appealing a judge’s decision to let the school stay. LSI says the environmental review didn’t take into account that potential victims would be children and infants, who may be more vulnerable to gas poisoning than adults, due to their size.

Ortel Corp. was started by a Caltech professor and two students nearly 20 years ago to develop semiconductor lasers for such things as fiber optics. Its Alhambra plant, an array of small buildings in an industrial park off Mission Road, hasn’t drawn controversy and has had no major gas leaks or accidents, officials said.

But with the explosion of the Internet, the company began growing too big for its Alhambra facility. Three years ago, Ortel planned to move to Rosemead, where city officials thought it would be a perfect “trophy company.”

“We got all pumped up on this company,” said Don Wagner, Rosemead’s assistant city manager. “We’re sorry we didn’t get them.”

Ortel withdrew its permit application when residents of a tight-knit hillside neighborhood, in an unincorporated area south of Rosemead, learned about the toxins and began protesting.

“We have a lot of retired lawyers, retired doctors and judges. We have a lot of influence,” said Rose Delgado, who lives on Bleeker Street, just above the proposed site. “We all came out of our huts ready to fight.”

That forced Ortel to look elsewhere. Last fall, the company settled on the Irwindale site, which straddles the border of Baldwin Park in a business center at 4900 Rivergrade Road.

Officials were effusive. Assemblyman Gallegos wrote columns in a local newspaper, lauding the company for both its safety record and the money it would bring to the area.

In a letter to Irwindale’s Planning Commission, Gallegos wrote: “Please consider the tremendous economic benefits that Ortel Corporation has brought to Southern California, and will bring to the City of Irwindale.”

The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., a private nonprofit organization that found the site for Ortel, and Irwindale officials acted quickly to push approval for the new plant through the Planning Commission, records and interviews show.

“This project is on the fast-track because of the urgency for Ortel needing to secure their new home before the end of the year,” city planner Ron Smothers wrote to county hazardous materials officials in November. “There is a great desire to keep this company in L.A. County and the State of California. Both Arizona and Nevada are secondary site locations for this company.”

“Basically, it was a timing issue,” said Smothers, who has since left the Irwindale planning department. “There was a very tight time frame they we’re looking at. The only serious issue was the question of hazardous materials.”

The Irwindale mayor and city manager did not return calls seeking comment.

The plant’s proximity to the schools and neighborhood concerned some, records show. Barbara Yu, a supervisor at the L.A. County Fire Department, was asked by Irwindale for her recommendations on the project before the city granted a conditional use permit.

“Accidents happen to the best of companies,” she wrote on Nov. 23. “With the proposed manufacturing site so close to schools and residential areas, it is imprudent to grant Ortel the conditional use permit.”

The city’s outside environmental consultant, Golder and Associates, also sounded a warning note in a preliminary report dated Nov. 24.

“Of particular concern is the potential for inadvertent release of toxic gases. . . . Golder recommends that a detailed risk assessment be performed prior to permitting of the proposed facility,” the firm wrote in a preliminary report.

The Planning Commission voted the same day to grant a conditional use permit without any detailed environmental review, records show. It based that action in part on a prior recommendation by city planners to give the plant a “negative declaration,” meaning that no environmental impact was anticipated by the project. The commission did vote to require the company to provide a risk management plan. If the city is not satisfied with the plan, city officials say, they can deny Lucent a building permit.

Smothers said he thought that Ortel had the technology to make the facility safe, and it would have to prove so before they were actually allowed to truck the chemicals in. He said the recommendations by the consultant and county fire officials to delay the conditional use permit is not “the way things get done in a city.”

Researching Hazardous Gases

But lacking any environmental reports, the families on Olive Street say they didn’t have full disclosure about what was moving in down the block. They said they had to learn about the hazards of arsine, phosphine, silane and hydrogen selenide on their own, through research on the Internet.

From their small colorful homes, with fruit trees in the back, they can look right up the easement to the low-slung white building into which Lucent will move in coming months. They say they worry that their housing prices will fall and that every time they hear a siren on Rivergrade Road, they will fear a subsequent waft of toxic vapors.

To them, it’s a matter of environmental justice.

“Why don’t they move to San Marino?” asked Maria Guzman Sanchez, 60.

It wasn’t until weeks after the permit was granted that the people began to organize against Ortel, which officially became Lucent in April. They have since flooded Baldwin Park City Council meetings with standing-room-only crowds, armed with petitions signed by hundreds of people opposed to the project.

“If there’s no danger, why do they have their own fire department?” asked Maria Villalobos.

The residents say they are not comforted that their schools will have hotlines to Lucent, in case of emergency.

The Baldwin Park School District briefly appealed the company’s move to the Irwindale City Council in December, but retracted the appeal after a meeting with Ortel. Susan Parks, superintendent of the district, said she was satisfied with the company’s safety measures.

Parks said some dangers are inevitable living in an urban area that borders an industrial city like Irwindale. “If all the agencies do their part, things should be OK,” she said.

Olive Street resident Sergio Corona, however, thinks the school district sold them out. “How is it that the school district can take the company’s word at face value?”