STRIGFELLOW ACID PITS

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Jan Kupnik 16, David Obolnar 16
Slovenia

28 March 2017 at 13:05

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<p style=”text-align: center;”>STRIGFELLOW ACID PITS</p>
The Stringfellow acid pits are toxic waste dump located in Riverside County approximately five miles northwest of the City of Riverside near the city of Los Angeles. Stringfellow Hazardous Waste Site occupies large 17 acres at the head of Pyrite Canyon in the Jurupa Mountains. The site became the center of national news coverage in the early 1980s partially because it was considered one of the most polluted cities in California, and because it became a sample of mismanagement and scandal in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Commonly referred to as the Stringfellow Acid Pits, the site functioned as a Class I industrial waste disposal facility permitted by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board from August 1956 to November 1972. In 1955, the RWQCB contacted James B. Stringfellow, owner of the local Stringfellow Quarry Company, to sit down and talk about the creation of an industrial waste dump on a portion of his company’s land in the Jurupa Mountains. Following a report by the State Division of Water Resources approving use of the site, Stringfellow agreed to the proposal, and the dumping of toxic wastes commenced in 1956.

Laboratory tests are showing that site contaminants include a variety of chemicals including trichloroethene (TCE) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), pesticides, sulfate, perchlorate, N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), 1,4-dioxane, parachlorobenzene sulfonic acid (pCBSA), and metals including cadmium, nickel, chromium, copper, manganese, and zinc. Groundwater near the former disposal pits is highly acidic, with a pH as low as 2. Approximately 34 million gallons of industrial wastes, which belonged to some of the most high-profile American companies and contained over 200 hazardous chemicals, were disposed of over the course of the site’s 16-year operation. The cost of cleaning up the Stringfellow acid pits, a Cold War-era dumping place for industrial waste in the hills above Jurupa Valley, continues to grow and remains a big ecological problem even today.

The acid pits are harmful to all locals as the pollution has spread underground up to five miles in each direction, as the water carries the waste and it poses a threat to people’s health. Various concerned activists and even mothers are concerned for them and their families and demand that they need to protect them from such harms and clean it up once and for all. But to this day, the pits remain and toxins are entering the waters closer and closer to towns, endangering the clueless and innocent residents of Riverside community.
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