Pacific Steel Castings - Bay Area Air Quality Mgt. VS Our West Berkeley Communities BEFORE THE HEARING BOARD OF THE BAY AREA AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT DISTRICT STATE OF CALIFORNIA AIR POLLUTION CONTROL OFFICER . Docket No. 832 OF BAY AREA AIR QUALITY MANAGEMENT DISTRICT ) ) ORDER TERMINATING Complainant CONDITIONAL ORDER OF ABATEMENT VS. PACIFIC STEEL CASTING COMPANY This was the last of eight hearings to approve the request of Pacific Steel Casting to terminate their Conditional Order of Abatement. The video recording contains the only public comment made during this final SF hearing, that of L A Wood, Berkeley Citizen and the concluding discussion/decisiosn of the BAAQMD Hearing Board. Recorded San Francisco BAAQMD Hearing Board November 2, 2000 Berkeley Citizen Copyright 2000 MORE... OUR West Berkeley Story: PSC's Permit to Pollute 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. This fact finally (15 years later) caught up with the BAAQMD, PSC and the City of Berkeley. NOTE: "The air contaminants reported by PSC to the BAAQMD consist of substances that have been targeted in the U.S. and California for tracking and emission reductions because they are known to be toxic to humans; even at low exposure levels, they pose a hazard to health. In the case of PSC, these emissions consist of a number of highly toxic heavy metals that persist in the environment, accumulate in human tissues, and are uniquely hazardous to children." Michael P. Wilson, Ph.D, MPH