The sight of murals that commemorate Latino history, the smell of tacos and pozole, and the sound of lively Spanish music can be heard on every street in East Los Angeles. But behind the rich connections to culture, home country, and family that make this community the embodiment of Latino identity, there is a history that is often untold.
“Within the past ten years my grandmother has gone from being able to cook for quinceañeras to struggling to cook for herself because every time she picks up her spoon her hand shakes.”
Looking outside his grandmother’s house, Hugo Lujan discovered that she lived a few blocks away from two highways, a chromium facility, railroad tracts, and less than two miles away from Exide Technologies. For over 1.1 million people living in East and Southeast Los Angeles, a predominately low-income Latino area, this is their reality.
Lujan explains that his grandmother lives “dead-smack in the middle of this environmental racism situation,” the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on low-income minority communities.
Like most people living in East Los Angeles, Lujan did not know that Exide, a lead-acid battery recycling facility, emitted lead and other hazardous chemicals in their backyards for over 30 years. A study published in 2014 found that Exide was responsible for increasing the cancer risk beyond acceptable levels of over 110,000 people.
After doing some research, Lujan connected the dots. “It’s definitely lead,” he explains, “Lead messes up your nervous system to the point where you can’t control movements.”
Motivated to address the root cause of his grandmother’s suffering, Lujan became a community organizer at East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. East Yard is one of the grassroots organizations that fought for the closure of the Exide Technologies’ facility in Vernon, California. On any given day, Lujan can be found giving classroom presentations at local high schools, door knocking in the cities of East Los Angeles, Bell Gardens, and Commerce, or organizing community members to attend the next Exide Advisory Group meeting. As someone who believes in the power of storytelling, Lujan shares his grandmother’s story to encourage others to find their personal motivation to address environmental injustice in their community.
Four years ago, Lujan began organizing people in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles after he found out county personnel conducted soil testing and found high levels of lead in Salazar Park, just two miles away from Exide. For some time, the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the agency in charge of regulating industry and also protecting public health, told parents to wash their children’s hands to prevent lead exposure. This advice was not well received by community members, like Lujan, who thought this minimized the severity of the issue and delayed a permanent solution to bigger problem.
At that point, the Department offered to clean-up three properties in the area, but Lujan immediately realized that this was not enough. “DTSC wanted to cut-back on how serious the situation was and…there were situations in which agreements were made between the homeowner and DTSC, even though the homeowner didn’t live there,” he explained. “They were basically paid to stay in their homes.” As a result of Lujan’s organizing efforts, DTSC expanded residential soil testing from three homes to over one hundred homes in his community.
After securing more soil testing, Lujan began door knocking in his community to ensure that people took advantage of this resource. Once he encouraged residents to get their home’s soil tested, Lujan maintained constant communication with them to build trust and strengthen the relationships he formed.
But building connections with the affected residents was only one part of the equation. Lujan also began communicating with DTSC to make sure the Department was reaching out to residents interested in soil testing as quickly as possible. He also scheduled monthly meetings with DTSC to prioritize activities and create a system of accountability.
Lujan’s organizing efforts were instrumental in shutting down Exide in March of 2015. Although closing Exide was a difficult task that took over ten years, Lujan knows that the fight is not over yet.
Now, he is advocating for even more soil testing to ensure that families in Commerce receive equal access and are not forgotten in this process. Even after several years of increasing awareness in the communities affected by the contamination, Lujan is not surprised that the majority do not know what is going on. “No one was informed about anything.”
This is alarming to Lujan, who describes that this situation is “…the worse lead contamination in the history of California.” He explains that this puts “a sense of urgency that the agency is forced to respond to.”
The biggest concern for people right now is making sure that residential testing and cleanup occur. There is a sense of frustration and anger among many community members. The Department has failed to answer 1) when is cleanup happening and 2) why the agency does not have enough money to clean up the 10,000 properties estimated to be contaminated.
Although Lujan knows that the Department is not providing enough reassurance to community members, he admits that he has never seen the head of a department interact in such a consistent level with local environmental justice organizations. He explains that “The director of DTSC, Barbara Lee, is always present for every Exide Advisory Group meeting.”
Unlike other campaigns Lujan has been working on, “[DTSC] also sees East Yard as a partner rather than as an enemy.” The organization currently has direct input in the facility’s closure process given that East Yard’s Executive Director, Mark Lopez, is a member of the Advisory Group. There is a growing sense of partnership in a community that has for so long felt betrayed and unprotected by the Department.
After years of slow response and broken promises, community members are urging that the Department expedite soil remediation and prioritize their concerns over Exide’s demands. The top priority among adults, especially parents, is protecting the welfare of children living, learning, and playing in the community. Public schools have not been tested yet and the parks that have been tested have not been remediated. Unfortunately, some schools in Commerce have not even been notified of the situation, but Lujan is working to quickly change that.
Lujan’s advocacy and organizing efforts are not only helping preserve his community’s environment, but also the rich cultural and ethnic history contained within its boundaries. What began as an effort to address his grandmother’s health has become a bigger movement to fight for a safe and clean environment for future generations to enjoy.
Picture: Hugo Lujan introduces his grandmother (left) at a community rally against Exide in January of 2015.
Credit: Hugo Lujan