Living with the dust from Riverside-area cement factory
Residents of the neighborhood where high levels of chromium 6 have been measured in the air tell of health problems.
The air above the TXI Riverside Cement Plant was blinding white Tuesday, blocking out the blue sky. For as long as Mary Alfonso, 79, can remember, dust from the factory has been a feature of life on "the Hill" just above it.
When she and her husband moved to the neighborhood near the border of Riverside and San Bernardino counties 52 years ago, they joked about its uniqueness because all the roofs were white.
"Then my car turned white -- and it started out green!" said Alfonso.
The dust was annoying, and people in the neighborhood assumed it wasn't good for them. But despite complaints over the years, they said, no one ever cleaned it up completely.
On Tuesday, residents of "the Hill" learned that the South Coast Air Quality Management District had found high levels of hexavalent chromium, a toxic carcinogen, in dust blowing from the outdoor "clinker piles" of the century-old plant in the Rubidoux area. And to add insult to injury, no officials had notified them.
"It would be nice if they even told us there was a problem," Alfonso said as she leaned on her cane outside her neat stucco home.
The high hexavalent chromium levels, revealed Monday in The Times, were first detected by staff from the AQMD in January. But AQMD executive officer Barry Wallerstein said it would have been irresponsible to notify neighbors of hazardous emissions then, before the agency had pinned down the cement plant as the source.
He said that he and his staff would provide full details of their investigation at a community meeting next week and that the agency was preparing multiple citations against the plant for violation of dust control and air pollution regulations, which should be issued by week's end. Under state law, negligent emission of air contaminants is punishable by a fine of up to $25,000 a day. Higher fines -- up to $1 million -- can be imposed under the Health and Safety code, for greater degrees of culpability and harm, including deaths.
AQMD staff found that levels of the potent carcinogen were 10 times higher than normal directly behind the plant on the downwind side.
TXI Riverside Cement spokesman Frank Sheets said Tuesday that the company still had not received notification from the AQMD that the factory was the source of the high chromium levels. But, he said, "if residents are concerned, we're concerned."
