CAC’s 2024 Accomplishments
We have a lot to be proud of when we look back at Clean Air Coalition’s accomplishments in 2024. From the services we provided to our communities, to our active engagement with regulatory agencies, our principled opposition to Ecobat’s bullying tactics, and participation in community EJ activism across LA County, CAC has been on the move! We break down the year’s highlights here.
The work we do with the community is ongoing. We continue to offer free soil testing in partnership with USC – and, thanks to our partnership with the Center for Environmental Health, neighbors within a ¼ mile radius of Ecobat/Quemetco can have new landscaping done in their yards. Our monthly public meetings at Evergreen Baptist Church (thank you, Pastor Hugo!) continue to bring in our neighbors for workshops and training that broaden our knowledge and connect us to each other while honing our organizing skills. Thanks to a spring workshop we held, CAC’s social media output has increased by a lot! We have many new followers now and more of us are regularly adding catchy new content to our Instagram. Our new website (www.cleanaircoalition.org) is also reaching more people and provides important information about CAC and the work we are doing. We invited Venezia Ramirez, Research Coordinator, USC Division of Environmental Health, to teach us about "Health Impacts from Toxic Metals” and CAC was selected for a Small Grant Award from the Center for Health, Environment & Justice to bring air scientist Dr. Katie Kolesar from Portland OR to present the results of CAC’s 11-month air study at our meeting in June. We held a day-long workshop to plan the campaign to oppose Quemetco’s permit renewal and then we held public workshops for the community about the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s permit process and about the details of Ecobat/Quemetco’s draft permit.
We’ve been busy working in coalition across LA County! We held weekly study sessions for volunteers who wanted to learn more about Quemetco’s draft permit so that we could prepare our written comments on the draft. We collaborated with Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech on a series of demonstrations and a workshop targeting both hazardous waste facilities. CAC volunteers participated in the Los Angeles EJ Network Symposium held at the California Endowment in DTLA, as part of the “Community Voices” panel. For the first time ever, we brought together a broad coalition of social justice organizations from across SoCal to support CAC’s campaign opposing Ecobat/Quemetco’s permit renewal and we held our fundraiser that brought a lot of folks out to support the organization while sharing a meal at California Fish Grill in Whittier. Our summer student intern, Aidan Moore, supported a lot of this work and created a snappy bilingual flyer to announce two public hearings about the permit renewal that were held this fall. CAC volunteers knocked on the doors of almost 2000 neighbors at the height of the summer’s heat to deliver this flyer and invite new people to the hearings, where many of us spoke passionately and knowledgeably in opposition to Quemetco/Ecobat and its toxic contamination of our homes. Our volunteers worked with the Bassett City School District to draft a resolution against Quemetco/Ecobat’s permit renewal that the school board passed in November after hearing public comments from our neighbors who supported it. And first-ever senior programming started at San Angelo Park, after many years of CAC advocacy and collaboration with the office of Supervisor Hilda Solis to make this a great resource a reality for the communities in our part of the county.
Our Earthjustice legal team led by Angela Johnson Meszaros and Adam Frankel made it possible for CAC to defend the Board of Environmental Safety (BES) appeal we won against Quemetco/Ecobat in 2023––CAC and Earthjustice will continue to defend this appeal next year. CAC met in person twice with the BES board members and staff to discuss our concerns about Quemetco/Ecobat and we met twice with DTSC staff to discuss our questions and concerns about the flawed and incomplete Human Health Risk Assessment included in Ecobat’s draft permit. Also with Earthjustice, we asked for and we were given an extended public comment period for the draft permit. We pushed back hard against Quemetco/Ecobat’s attempt to silence us and we spoke up forcefully at the BES meeting in March about this ridiculous intimidation. We ended 2024 with a trip to the LA County Board of Supervisors’ meeting to ask the supervisors to pass a motion opposing Ecobat’s permit, just like they did in 2020.
Finally, check out these 2024 news stories about Quemetco/Ecobat that highlight the important work of CAC!
Will New Air Monitor and More Disclosures Improve Safety at Lead Battery Smelter? - Public Health Watch (this is 4-part series about Ecobat)
We are proud of Clean Air Coalition’s accomplishments and honored to be YOUR grassroots environmental justice organization. Next year will be busy, too. We’d love to have you join our movement!