L A Wood, Berkeley Daily Planet, June 2, 2001
Corp yard still noisy, polluting

Almost a decade has elapsed since a small group of West Berkeley residents living around the city's Corporation Yard came together to protest the impacts of the vehicle maintenance facility on the community. This public outcry was directed towards the maintenance facility's traffic, fueling Station, and the almost complete absence of any environmental protections.

Topping the list of community concerns were issues of air quality, chemicals and hazardous waste storage, and storm water pollution controls. Public Works argued that management was actually environmentally pro-active and blamed the operational impacts on the rundown eighty-year old facility. However, local residents found out firsthand that the facility's age was just part of the problem.

In April 1992, while on a tour of the facility, the community witnessed a street sweeper illegally dumping the liquid portion of its street collection into the Yard's storm drain, a clear violation of the Clean Water Act. This public incident, though quite embarrassing for city staff, reinforced the neighborhood's contention that the time had come for changes in both the facility and its municipal maintenance activities.

Over the next several years, Public Works met regularly with the neighbors to address the operations of the vehicle facility. However, few changes actually occurred. Residents should have realized early on in the community process that the Yard meetings were being used to silence public discussion.

Neighborhood involvement was reduced to little more than a series of public relations meetings while Public Works waited politely for residents to talk themselves out and go away. And so they did, but the environmental compliance problems remained.

The 1992 sweeper dumping incident also revealed to the community that such Corporation Yard activities require a Federal discharge permit. Moreover, Berkeley was, and is, a member of Alameda County's storm water program. One of the program's central components is that of municipal maintenance activities and best management practices for environmental protection. The county program responded by both reprimanding Berkeley and encouraging the city to move forward in modernizing its maintenance operations. The choice, since that time, has been Berkeley's.

Unfortunately, the city's choice, like other county storm water members, has been to view this area of Capital Improvement as a very low priority. This has only reinforced public criticism that the county's storm water program amounts to little more than revenue enhancement for the city.

Two weeks ago, the Corporation Yard was cited for polluting the storm drains in the Yard. The Notice of Violation made public the fact that there had been prior notices for corrective actions dating as far back as 1995. The citation, written on a rainy day, was linked directly to the antiquated and inadequate protection and containment of sand, asphalt, hazardous wastes, equipment and contaminated soils on site. It should be noted that the Yard's EBMUD discharge permit is currently out of compliance for this same reason. From a management perspective, this long-term Public Works failure to comply with environmental regulations is outrageous.

Last November, Berkeley's Public Works celebrated being the first city in the state to receive an accreditation for excellence by the Public Works Association. It's not surprising that the accreditation team, as it toured the Corp Yard, apparently overlooked these obvious shortcomings. It should be remembered that environmental protection is a relatively new mandate for Public Works activities here and across the nation.

The time has come to fully capitalize an upgrade of Corp Yard activities and storage areas. Let's do it right. Being responsive to environmental protection and compliance requires real commitment and cash. It's really not an option. Today, it's the law!