Los Angeles Education Examiner

In November, I drove to South East LA to visit the site where a charter school purchased polluted land to build a new campus.  I made this trip after I had a conversation with Susie de Santiago, an activist protecting her neighborhood in Cudahy.   I wanted to see with my own eyes  twenty thousand square feet of heavy metal and arsenic laced dirt. After I drove around the sweet neighborhood, I was left with a question; why is it always okay for big money to generate toxic messes in non-white communities?

 In September I heard neighbors were concerned that a big monied charter school was moving at breakneck speed in Cudahy. While it was alarming to the community that KIPP, a large corporate charter, would damage the cohesiveness of their small neighborhood, more disturbing was the speed at which the operators were moving. Residents were concerned as to what was being lost with this speed. Was it transparency? Proper civic diligence? Environmental justice? Lack of understanding history?  The activists had real concerns.

A fellow environmental and education activist introduced me to Susie. Over Zoom, we discussed the situation in Cudahy. I noted Susie exhibited something I have seen before when principled people, regular folks with normal, simple lives have to pivot and set personal routines aside to take up a righteous fight. Their moral compass and humility is strong, but their voice is soft. I heard that quiet resolve in Susie as she talked about Cudahy Alliance for Environmental Justice (CAJ) and the toxic land purchased by KIPP.  

Cudahy Alliance for Environmental Justice is a group of parents, teachers, and community activists. Susie explained they were brought together after KIPP bought large parcels on Otis Avenue. Their goal is a  K-12 school with over one thousand students. I shook my head at the thought of one thousand humans in cars suddenly in a neighborhood. But what was even more alarming to the Cudahy Alliance folks was what Susie told me next. “The KIPP property was a former smelting plant”. 

“Like Exide?” I asked. 

She nodded. I sighed.

Smelting plants are dangerous to a community. The melting process sends heavy metals into the air which are blown throughout the area and then fall on the land. For decades, the Exide Battery Plant in Vernon polluted and caused medical issues for the primarily Latino citizens in nearby communities  including Cudahy. If not for former LAUSD Board Member Bennett Kayser, alerted by sparkly rainbow bubbles on gutter water, Exide would still be pumping out pollutants harming innocent citizens.  Board member Kayser had the rainbow water tested in 2013. It was loaded with toxic chemicals. Outside agencies were brought in and Bennett Kayser did what the City of Vernon would not do for decades, call out the toxicity and health risks on the community created by Exide.

Susie told me the chemicals at the KIPP property (Phase 1 environmental report provided to Cudahy) included lead, arsenic, and asbestos.  I recognized them as the same toxic chemicals at Exide. We then talked about the Cudahy City Council meeting on September 15, Susie said they gave KIPP the green light. I asked, “What about public comment?” She said there was little to no community input despite the fact that there were dozens of speakers who wanted to voice their concerns. I saw the tiredness in her face as she continued, “We didn’t get put into the call until an hour later.”

In our Covid Era, city councils are reliant on cyber meetings to conduct business. The activists were admitted late in the meeting, they watched the council vote Yes without real debate or an explanation. The City told them that they had technical issues for admitting them late in the meeting. I was stymied by this answer.  We had been in semi- quarantine for six months by September, a city council should be on their “A” technical game by this point. Additionally, on a matter this great, the city could have delayed the vote until they had robust community input and real discussion. Especially given Cudahy had suffered an environmental injustice earlier this year.  

On January 14, of this year, Delta Airlines Flight 89 bound for Shanghai dumped jet fuel on Cudahy during an emergency landing at LAX. Cudahy residents had high octane aviation fuel land on their bodies, homes, and children in the playground at Park Avenue Elementary. It was a terrible story and deserved more coverage.  There might have been more media attention but for the unfortunate helicopter accident a few days later that killed Kobe Bryant.  Los Angeles and the world went into an understandable mourning and all media went northwest of Cudahy.  

But what about the City Council?  This is hardly the first time that Cudahy residents have been exposed to toxic chemicals and have been abandoned by their City Council.  

Park Avenue Elementary was built in 1968 on Vloadman Dump which had been in existence since 1929. One day in 1990, a toxic sludge bubbled up in the Park Avenue playground. Parents and the community were angered and demanded answers. Park Avenue was shut down, students were sent to other schools and public monies were used to clean up the mess at great cost. Subsequent removal of soils from the site continued for many years. 

Given this history how could the City of Cudahy not pause on this KIPP proposal to build at a  former smelting plant? In an email later I asked Susie if KIPP provided a CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) report. 

She replied, “KIPP was not required to conduct a CEQA analysis since it was considered a “ministerial project”. I was dumbfounded. A city experiences the chaos of a hazardous school site, a history of toxic air, chemicals oozing up from the ground, petroleum dumped from the air -and no one in the City Council takes a beat before green-lighting a school at a former smelting plant? 

Or is it just a case of big money getting what they want?

Whatever it was, CAJ was not waiting for a wave of common sense to hit City of Cudahy or KIPP, they filed a lawsuit to stop the insanity.  Susie invited me to a zoom where the CAJ was meeting with community members. I knew I needed to see this land called Cudahy prior to the meeting.  

I did a quick research and learned in 1893, Michael Cudahy, a cattle and pork baron, purchased Naudeau Rancho which once belonged to Don Antonio Lugo as part of his Spanish land grant,  Rancho San Antonio.   Lugo’s descendants sold it to Cudahy who used it to hold cattle and pigs before they went to his slaughterhouse on Macy street.  Eventually, he decided the land would better serve Mid Westerners moving to Los Angeles and laid out narrow lots, deep lots perfect for small houses and vegetable gardens.  That land is now Cudahy and along the way it went from a white to Latino community. 

On a warm November afternoon I took Alameda to Florence and drove through the hustle and bustle of Huntington Park.  When I turned off Florence to Otis everything was cozier. There were children on bikes, people heading for a tiny market, a man raking leaves and lots of cars heading towards Florence for the onramp to the 710. I continued South on Otis Avenue until I reached the corner with the huge property. It was impossible to miss. 

The east side is across the street from Lugo Park with its FIFA regulation soccer field. The south side fronts Salt Lake Avenue, a major thoroughfare on an angle adjacent to the Union-Pacific train tracks. On the north side, Olive Street  is where I saw the ghost of Michael Cudahy’s aspirations. The narrow, deep lots had a mixture of houses, both wooden and stucco and multi-unit apartments. Some lots still had fruit trees, perhaps planted by Midwesterners a hundred years ago. I saw a cut-out of a burro leaning against a shed and for a second, I thought, “Is that real?” It was not.

When I checked Google Earth, there were buildings on the property but now there was rubble. I wondered if precautions were taken when the buildings were torn down? Did asbestos go flying in the air and land on the artificial grass of the soccer field? Did it land on the fruit trees?  I took a few photos and then raced home for the meeting.  

The Cudahy Alliance meeting was translated in English and Spanish.  The CAJ folks explained the situation. Neighbors and parents had basic questions about KIPP, the land, the City Council, the toxins and the implications for their children. When the CAJ folks explained what lead does to young bodies you could have heard a pin drop, even on a Zoom screen. 

One Park Avenue teacher spoke with measured and deep emotion about her own fears every time she goes to work for herself and the kids.  Listening to these hard-working teachers answer thoughtful questions from the community was a testament to protective citizens who understand what is fair and equitable versus what has questionable ethics and is self-serving. I noted it was dinner time and the activists probably needed to feed their families but there they were answering questions.

Later I followed up with one of the Cudahy Alliance activists, Aydé Bravo and asked more about KIPP.  She said, “Kipp is a national network of charter schools, it is expanding quickly, and with that they are disregarding safety measures to ensure the health of people in Cudahy.”  

Aydé continued, “I have not seen a cleanup plan by Kipp SoCal Pueblo Unido. Currently, Kipp is not legally bound to clean up the soil although arsenic was found at 200 times the level that is allowed and PCE at double the levels along with many other toxins.  As it stands, Kipp could build their new school on toxic soil and never have to report it.”        

I made a second trip to Cudahy. I wanted to see Park Avenue Elementary and I wanted to ask Susie a few questions. On this trip I took my husband and we drove up and down the streets of Cudahy. He said it reminded him of suburbia Orange County where he grew up. He also noted the traffic and said, “A thousand students and their cars will kill this neighborhood.” 

When we got to Park Avenue Elementary my husband marveled at the height of the wall adjacent to the Los Angeles River. I told him I found images in the LAPL of the river flooding and tearing out Cudahy houses. The periodic flooding was what made this very land so nutrient rich and easy to grow produce I said, “How ironic it would be turned into a dump.”

I pulled up to Susie’s block as the sun was beginning to set. It was nice to meet in person although at a Covid safe distance. Any other time, I think we might have hugged. I asked about her house which looked post war. She said it was built in late 40 or early 50s. I said it reminded me of my childhood home. She and her husband were renters at first but then eventually bought the property nearly twenty years ago. They raised their seven children who all went on to college and it was then we realized my son and her children went to the same magnet high school. We both smiled behind our masks.

The conversation turned back to the KIPP property and I asked about the rubble.  She explained that KIPP tore down the buildings after purchasing the property and she said there were no protective measures  used when they tore them down.  It all happened quickly.  ‘Quick’ is the hallmark of this situation and one of the reasons Susie is on the lawsuit.  Someone had to slow it down.  It fell on this gentle woman who gets nothing for doing the right thing except, I suppose to look in the mirror and feel good about standing up for the righteous fight.  As I got in the car, Susie mentioned that the Mayor of Cudahy lives down the street. I said, “I hope she hears you guys. It will serve her and the community.” Susie nodded, “Yes”. I added, “I’m going to write about this situation”. “Thank you,” she said through her mask. I waved goodbye.

As my husband and I were waiting at the stop light on Florence and Salt Lake we both noticed a jet against the orange sky in the west. My husband said that our son, an aviation enthusiast, would love Cudahy, “Don’t you think he would do nothing all day but watch the planes go into final approach to LAX?” The sunset hues bounced on the train tracks, I wondered if these were the tracks that took Michael Cudahy’s hogs to the slaughterhouse. 

The exhaust of a car heading to the 710 wafted in my nose. Studies have shown children’s lead level is elevated if they live near a freeway. How much more lead was added to Cudahy’s children by being downwind of Exide? I thought of KIPP coming into Cudahy.  Would they be like Exide and let others clean up their misguided mess? I saw a man walking down the street, he looked like all the people before him, carving out his life on the land where Don Lugo once rode his horse, where the Tongva earlier hunted their meals. It was a rich land. The jet grew smaller in the sky. My son would know exactly how much fuel was in the tank if he was with us. I sighed then turned to my husband, “Yes, I think he would like Cudahy very much.” The light turned green and we headed home.

Environmental Justice issues in one part of LA does not excuse our responsibility for the injustice even if we live in other parts of the city.

If you wish to help the Cudahy Alliance Environmental Justice go here for their Go Fund Me.