Board of Directors
Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)
San Francisco, CA April 19, 2016
L A Wood comments...
Whether by regulatory negligence, the discretion of the air district’s Air Pollution Control Officer (APCO) or simple political accommodation, PSC was allowed to bifurcate its permit into two SMOPs. This allowed the Berkeley foundry to falsely represent its emissions as though it were two smaller, independent companies. It also allowed PSC to profit from this BAAQMD-sanctioned downgrade. Of course, these illegal actions by the air district came at the expense of detriment to the surrounding west Berkeley community.

The lower reporting numbers for PSC’s two SMOP permits were quite effective in shielding PSC from regulatory demands to make more adequate upgrades to its three facilities or to expand the foundry’s capacity to monitor its emissions. It has also propped up the BAAQMD's insistence that the company was operating within the bounds of the law. From the air district's perspective, PSC had become nearly too small to pollute.

Berkeley Citizen
Copyright 2016