Odorous Order: Air Quality Board Places New Conditions on Foundry
Judith Scherr, Berkeley Daily Planet, January 10, 2000

Over the objections of two of its five members, the Bay Area Air Quality Hearing Board ruled Thursday to impose new conditions on a west Berkeley foundry.

According to the order, Pacific Steel Castings must:

• Hold at least two community meetings to address citizen concerns and to explain efforts to reduce odor nuisances.
• Submit a report by Sept. 1 to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and the hearing panel "detailing all complaints received by PSC between Oct. 28, 1999 and Sept. 1, 2000"
• Include the results of the community meetings and actions taken by PSC in response in the report.

The hearing board will make a decision by Oct. 1, determining whether to continue the conditional abatement order or lift it.

At issue was a 1984 order by the air district for PSC to abate odor complaints. Having installed new equipment and having not received any violation notices for two years, PSC asked BAAQMD to lift its order, which imposes hefty fines when violated.

Three hearings were held in Berkeley over the summer, where citizens testified that odor problems - "the smell of burning pot handles" - persist, albeit, the objectionable odor occurred less frequently than it had in the 1980s, some said.

Although PSC's attorney had argued that the lack of public nuisance violations against the company showed that the odor had been abated, the hearing board took the citizens' concerns into account in rendering its decision Thursday.

Moreover, the report slammed the district's method of determining a violation, although the hearing panel has no jurisdiction over changing the methodology.

The Hearing Board report - denied to the public in the draft form discussed at the meeting, but available to the public from the BAAQMD Hearing Board in its final form - took note of specific public testimony.

The report said that Peter Holloway testified that he did not know where to complain about an odor after hours; L A Wood said it was a burden to require five verified complaints per noxious odor in order to declare an official violation; James Miles testified that the person complaining had to wait at home until a staff person from the district arrived.

"Once a resident learns where to go, the complaint process is a tedious one," the report says. "It is a heavy burden to place on residents to expect them to repeatedly call and complain and wait for an inspector."

The report concludes that "the Hearing Board is persuaded that the evidence and testimony presented show that the district's policy and procedures for citizen odor complaints may not accurately reflect actual odor emission occurrences and hence nuisance."

One of the hearing panel members, Larry Milnes, asked for a delay in the proceedings, because he had just received a revised copy of the draft document and hadn't time to read it. He was overruled by the chair, Alvin Greenberg.

Another of the hearing panel members, Antoinette Stein, had previously argued that since citizens still complained of odors and since they found problems with the district's reporting process, the Unconditional Order for Abatement should not be dropped.

She wrote a dissenting opinion. "It is therefore especially important that the Unconditional Order for Abatement not be lifted at this time, since it should remain in place as a tool for citizens to use to fully rectify odor nuisance problems that Pacific Steel Casting fails to recognize" she wrote.

The air board's objections to the hearings were also dismissed by the chair. The BAAQMD attorney said that the hearing board was exceeding its authority by instituting new conditions, when the hearings had simply been on whether the unconditional order to abate should be maintained or dropped.

Greenberg, however, said the Hearing Board was within its rights to write a Conditional Order for Abatement for the foundry.

PSC has previously said it would challenge the imposition of new conditions. Neither the PSC general manager nor its attorneys responded to the Daily Planet's request for comment for this story.