In June, District Attorney George Gascon and other officials gathered with great fanfare at Jordan High School in Watts to announce criminal charges being filed against Atlas Iron & Metal Co., which is accused of having deposited toxic waste on the school campus for years.
By late September the celebrations and politicians were long gone. The vulnerable students and fully operational metal recycling plant remained.
Genesis Cruz, a recent graduate of Jordan High School who spent years trying to draw attention to flying shrapnel and nauseating fumes she experienced on campus, says the lack of follow up or action since June has been a disappointment.
She is especially concerned about the safety of current students after an investigation found lead levels in the campus’s soil to be 75 times higher than those deemed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Toxics produced by the plant–and potentially ingested by roughly 500 students at the campus, as well as families at the adjacent 700-unit Jordan Downs public housing complex–include lead, chromium, nickel, zinc, selenium and copper.
The plant and its owners, Gary and Mark Weisenberg, face 22 felony charges, four misdemeanor charges and a separate civil lawsuit from the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Atlas is allowed to continue operating unless ordered to stop by a judge, and such a judgement may take months or years to come, if it comes at all.
“Sometimes I feel, ‘Oh well these things take time,’ but then I begin to feel upset because I know this would be a much faster process if Watts was a more affluent community,” said Cruz.
This sentiment was echoed by a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District.
“Can you imagine a heavy metals recycler next door to a school in a more affluent area? It would not happen and should not have happened in Watts, either,” the spokesperson said. “These types of health, safety and environmental issues are ones that no school,…
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