LOS ANGELES (AP) – A battery recycling plant that violated hazardous waste laws and spewed toxic emissions for decades on the outskirts of Los Angeles will close and spend $50 million to clean the site and surrounding neighborhoods, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Exide Technologies admitted felony violations over 20 years but avoided criminal prosecution in the agreement that achieves what residents of surrounding poor communities couldn’t get state regulators to do for years despite a long history of violation notices and fines.
“Our long nightmare is over,” Monsignor John Moretta of Resurrection Church said on behalf of community groups. “We have attended dozens and dozens of meetings and hearings always fighting for what we saw as something obvious: Exide was poisoning our community and had to be closed.”
The 15-acre Vernon plant, 5 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, had been idle for a year amid legal and environmental battles, but its owners hoped to reopen.
Local, state and federal officials have for years cited Exide for emitting excessive lead and arsenic and violating hazardous material laws.