Hinkley air quality lawsuit set for Monday

BARSTOW • Hinkley’s lawsuit against the local air quality management district over a rule governing composting facilities is set to begin at the Barstow Courthouse on Monday.

A group representing the community, HelpHinkley.org, filed its suit against the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District in December 2008 to try to get them to strengthen a rule that regulates the amount of dust and other pollutants released into the air from composting facilities. Hinkley has been fighting a two-year battle to prevent Nursery Products, LLC from building a sewage sludge composting facility near their community.

“We’re just trying to make sure the public is protected from this kind of procedure, which can be very dusty if not done correctly,” said Norman Diaz, chairman of the HelpHinkley.org, the group that filed the lawsuit along with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.

Ingrid Brostrom, staff attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which is providing its services to Hinkley pro-bono, said her side’s argument is that when the air quality district wrote the composting rule they failed to do any environmental analysis of the impacts it would have. She said the California Integrated Waste Management Board submitted evidence that in some of its provisions, the composting rule may actually increase air emissions.

Air quality management districts adjacent to the Mojave Desert, in the San Joaquin Valley and the Los Angeles basin, have developed stronger composting rules either requiring that facilities be enclosed or that they use technology to filter the air coming off the sludge.

“The Mojave air district is the only air district in the region that has a weak rule,” she said. “We’re concerned that sludge composting facilities no longer will locate in the San Joaquin or the (L.A. area), they’ll all come to the Mojave Desert.”

Even though she couldn’t speak about the lawsuit, Violette Roberts, Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District spokesman, said if the air in the High Desert is polluted to a similar level as the San Joaquin Valley or Los Angeles basin, the district would definitely require that the compost facility near Hinkley be enclosed. But because the air quality in the desert is much cleaner than the valley and the L.A. area, the requirements they can impose on compost facilities must be less stringent.

“Our rules and mandates are passed down to us by the federal (Environmental Protection Agency) and the (state) air resources board and we propagate them here,” she said, adding that the current rule is as strict as the district has the authority to impose. “The rule that we passed, we believe, is protective of health.”

Even though Nursery Products, LCC’s proposed composting facility is not in Barstow, Diaz said support from the community as well as residents in Newberry Springs and Silver Valley is vital as Hinkley begins its legal proceedings at 1:30 p.m. Monday.

“The winds blow consistently from the west to the east,” he said. “It will blow across Hinkley and then right across Barstow and right across Newberry.”

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com