The threat within days of a catastrophic chemical explosion in Garden Grove has exposed the widespread but often overlooked industrial risks hidden amid daily life in Southern California, where aerospace plants and petrochemical facilities intertwine among homes, schools and parks.
Now, experts say this aging infrastructure is changing with population growth and regulatory rollbacks, increasing the likelihood that similar events will happen again.
The Los Angeles area became a global center for aerospace and defense manufacturing around the beginning of World War II, with companies producing military aircraft, electronics, plastics, petroleum products, and other specialty materials, helping to transform the area into a dense manufacturing region, even as its suburban footprint was expanding.
Many of those operations used petrochemical products and solvents such as resins, adhesives and acrylic compounds such as methyl methacrylate, the chemical at the center of the Orange County crisis. Although some of this work has slowed since the end of the Cold War, many industrial sites remain active and survive within communities.
That makes the possibility of another Garden Grove incident a matter of “if,” not when, said Seth Shonkoff, executive director of the Institute for Science Research. PSE Healthy Energy.
“It’s not really a matter of whether industrial accidents are possible in the LA Basin – they are,” he said. “The key question is whether regulatory systems, emergency preparedness and land use decisions are keeping pace with changing industrial hazards and increasing urban density.”
While the Garden Grove incident was in some ways driven by specific system failures, there are a number of factors that now make it likely to occur more frequently, said Shonkoff, who is also an associate researcher at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.
They include global warming, which is increasing the average number of days of extreme heat in Southern California, putting greater strain on storage tanks and industrial processes that rely on the need to keep production materials cool.
Additionally, much of the region’s industrial infrastructure is aging, making them more prone to leaks, cracks or failure.
But perhaps most important is the push to build more housing in places where housing has typically not been built. Sometimes that means more people are moving into undeveloped areas along the wildland-urban interface, which can put them at greater risk for wildfires, but other times, it means they’re moving closer and closer to industrial areas.
“When you increase population density around these types of facilities, you’re increasing the risk that if something goes mechanically wrong, more people will be at risk,” Shonkoff said.
Many of these areas are home to low-income communities and communities of color that are already experiencing disproportionate harm from pollution and other environmental threats, said Deja McCauley, land use and health program manager for the nonprofit Physicians for Social Responsibility of Los Angeles.
This has already been proven by past environmental disasters, such as decades of lead pollution Exide Battery Plant in Vernonor toxic dust and explosions Atlas Metals Recycling Plant in Watts.
Just last week, when emergency crews responded to a chemical crisis at the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove, 2,400 gallons of crude oil spilled in the Los Angeles River near East Los Angeles, and a Fire breaks out in tire recycling center In South Gate, orders to shelter in place were given.
But while some communities are moving closer to existing industrial facilities, there are also regulatory changes that are making it easier to build industrial facilities closer to communities, McCauley said.
Last year, Governor Gavin Newsom passed two controversial bills California Environmental Quality Act overhauledOr CEQA. The law exempted a wide range of housing developments and infrastructure from environmental review in an effort to streamline construction and help address California’s housing shortage.
While some welcomed it as a necessary cut in red tape, critics said the move would expose more vulnerable communities to potential harm: the law includes a Exemptions for advanced manufacturing facilitiesSuch as semiconductor plants, nuclear facilities, industrial factories and other locations that handle high-risk hazardous materials would be permitted in some communities without any environmental review.
Additionally, the Trump administration has taken steps to roll back regulations on emissions from industrial facilities such as mercury and other toxic substances. emitted from coal plants. Earlier this year, the administration said it would Loosen limits on ethylene oxide emissionsA cancer causing chemical Often used in sterilization of medical devices, including Lots of amenities in Los Angeles.
“What’s happening in Garden Grove — we’re going to see a lot more of this because of these environmental rollbacks,” McCauley said.
A new state bill, SB 954Now moving through the legislature it would restore some CEQA protections that were removed last year, including limiting the types of facilities that can bypass environmental review and providing more guidelines for siting in sensitive locations like schools, homes and daycares.
But one reason the community here remains sensitive to events like Garden Grove is that many people don’t know about the area’s long history of industrial manufacturing, said Peter Westwick, assistant history professor and director at USC. Aerospace History Project.
Westwick said, “Its association with Hollywood, which most people probably think of as ‘industry’ in L.A., has perhaps obscured L.A.’s suburban image as well as the manufacturing presence.”
Even before the manufacturing and aerospace boom, L.A.’s industrialization began with natural resource extraction driven by the oil industry, he said — a legacy that is also creating dangers such as the Chevron refinery explosion in El Segundo last year.
From the 1940s to the 1960s, LA also had a thriving auto industry second only to Detroit, producing half a million cars at its peak.
“All this manufacturing provided a lot of jobs and fueled L.A.’s remarkable growth in the early and mid-20th century, but it had a major legacy in air pollution, groundwater pollution, etc.,” Westwick said.
He added that “the current emergency is an example of this long-term embedding of industry around Garden Grove LA”.
At present, most of the responsibility for risk management falls on individuals. equipment such as CalEnviroScreen Or PSE’s Methane Risk Map It can help people locate pollution sources, toxic facilities, and other hazards in their area.
State agencies such as the California Air Resources Board, California Environmental Protection Agency and Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment also offer various guidelines or enforcement mechanisms, but their jurisdictions are fragmented and disjointed, said Shonkoff of PSE Health Energy.
He said the biggest factor that will determine when the next Garden Grove will happen is not individual actions, but how the industry and regulators approach the safety of these facilities, including where they should be located.
“The onus should be placed on facilities to manage their risk,” he said, “and also on regulators to make important decisions about when ‘close’ is too close.”
