Activist Demands Scrutiny of Foundry
Marc Albert,  Berkeley Voice, May 27, 1999

Last Thursday, Miriam Kaminsky held her nose during a softball game. It wasn't because her daughter's team was losing. According to Kaminsky, both teams, about 30 girls, from the Berkeley-Albany girl's softball league spent much of the game covering their noses and trying to stay upwind of an insidious smell. Described as that of a burning pot handle, the odor has been a fact of life for northwest Berkeley and Albany residents and a known quantity to state regulators for years.

"All the kids were complaining about it, all the parents were smelling it, it was a really heavy stench. There was really nowhere you could move to get out of it. One of the coaches thought it was a train burning its breaks. But I knew what it was." Kaminsky said.

The game was played at Fielding Field, a stretch of industrial land near Albany Village converted to a playing field by sports enthusiasts. The source of the smell is the 65-year-old Pacific Steel Casting metal foundry a few blocks away. At the factory at Second and Gilman streets, 350 well-paid union workers fabricate metal parts for machinery and industry. The plant was recently awarded a commendation by the city for staying put, and keeping its well-paid, moderately skilled jobs in Berkeley.

In many ways the case is emblematic of land-use and environmental struggles throughout the country. Land-use patterns are changing, and every year more housing developments and recreational destinations are approved along the edges of Berkeley's shrinking industrial quarter.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District says the public shouldn't be concerned with the unpleasant odor. The smell is associated with organic compounds which smell bad, but aren't particularly harmful. According to the agency the sources of concern -- burning nickel, cadmium and other metals‹ are odorless, and releases are far below levels considered to be dangerous.

The reassurance of regulators is hardly soothing to Kaminsky, who along with neighborhood groups has fought the factory since at least the early 1980s.

"Pacific Steel is putting thousands of pounds of waste into the air each year," she charged, "including nickel, chromium and manganese, which are known carcinogens and toxins. I don't believe this terrible stench of burning metal is harmless."

In I998, the plant won permission to burn off some of its waste at the site." The incinerator went on line about a year ago and regulators say, the operation is cleaner now than it was before.

Environmental activist L A Wood says there's more than meets the nose. Wood maintains that the incinerator is not just a malodorous nuisance, but a genuine public health concern.

By comparing the permit issued by BAAQMD for the incinerator, which the agency calls a "fluidized bake oven" with numbers prior to its installation, a picture begins to emerge. The incinerator alone puts out 2.5-tons of particulates, .7 tons of nitrogen oxide, a key ingredient of smog, and 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

But as Ted Hull, a BAAQMD air quality engineer contends, the amounts are inconsequential. "Even a small internal combustion engine would emit more than that (amount of nitrogen oxide). That's less than 10 pounds a day. We wouldn't consider that a lot."

Wood insists the air district fully investigate plant emissions and study cumulative health effects. According to him, the board's ruling that the company's emissions are within all regulatory standards is a misnomer. Wood charges that the board overlooks cumulative effects of various pollutants on human health.

"They are losing the forest for the trees. Pacific Steel Casting is one of the biggest dischargers into Alameda County air and the air board is treating them like a mom and pop cleaners."

But according to the BAAQMD, the state agency charged with regulating air pollution, the smells may be unpleasant, but the odor itself is not a public health problem.

"The existence of an odor problem does not necessarily correspond with a health risk," said Brian Bateman, who leads the district's toxics division. The odor, described by the air board as similar to a burning pothandle, is created when organic compounds in metal forms are burned.

Numerous complaints of public nuisance in the early 1980's prompted the district to act. The agency forced the company to install an efficient incinerator and raise the height of its smokestack. A higher stack disperses pollutants over a wider area, but in lower concentrations. "There hasn't been any specific complaint, and no public nuisance or notice of violation in at least six years," said BAAQMD supervisor Richard Lew, "The odor was a lot, lot worse before."

But neighborhood groups insist the mix of industry and homes is inappropriate for an incinerator. Wood and Kaminsky say the factory is within 1,008 feet of a day-care center. Wood complains that a public hearing required before stacks are located near schools was never held, though the factory predates the school and the law.

Wood also charges that the complaint process is too circuitous for the community. "They have to have three people call in one hour and only then they'll come out and take some air sampling. The community is burned out on the regulatory process."

Wood wants constant monitoring of the plant's emissions.

"The last time there was any talk about the health effects was 10 years ago," he said. Wood said the company is allowed to burn 10,000 tons of material annually, and the board won't study cumulative health effects.

"Their main emission's nickel," Bateman countered, "but again they are within established limits. It's a well-controlled plant." Bateman said his agency doesn't commission health risk studies unless scientists estimate the health risk at over one cancer in 100,000 people over a 70-year period. Pacific Steel Castings is below that level.

"I'm not sure where Mr. Wood is coming from," said company spokeswoman Christine Chan, " I'm not sure what he is talking about.

"Since (the 1980's) we have done a lot. We were the first company in the country to put in a carbon filtration for the emissions before it is released from our plant. The company has been working within its permit. I don't know what we can do to convince Mr. Wood that we are a health and safety conscious company."