Santa Ana’s industrial water pollution issue is once again spilling into the spotlight, as sheet metal workers take action against their factory over safety complaints and water contamination that’s exceeded allowable levels under the Clean Water Act for years.
Pollution levels in stormwater discharged by the Kingspan Light + Air factory in Santa Ana’s Delhi Neighborhood have gone beyond permitted amounts every year since 2018, according to documents the company filed with regulators in May.
Yet employee whistleblowers say Kingspan has not taken certain actions to fix the problem and hasn’t followed its own stormwater pollution prevention plan, which was required of the company as a condition for obtaining its state permit.
The company entered a legal settlement over largely the same issue in April this year, with the Orange County Coastkeeper, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group that sued the company in 2020, in part due to the levels of materials like zinc and aluminum in contaminated water.
The complaints come before city council members are expected to address related environmental justice issues at their Dec. 7 meeting, when they consider revising Santa Ana’s foundational planning document for the first time in decades.
The struggle around this one factory is fueling serious and longstanding concerns over Santa Ana’s industrial core and its businesses’ quality of life impacts to residents over the years.
The sheet metal factory directly discharges the polluted...
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