OAKLAND, CA: Scrap Metal Plant Sued for Illegal SF Bay Pollution
Media Release
For immediate release September 10, 2009
Contact: Denny Larson, Global Community Monitor: 415-845-4705 or Michael R. Lozeau:, Lozeau | Drury LLP: (510) 749-9102
Citizens Take Legal Action to Stop Pollution of San Francisco Bay
(West Oakland, CA) A troubled scrap metal/aluminum casting facility in West Oakland, Custom Alloy Scrap Sales (CASS) was sued today for massive violations of water pollution laws by a Bay Area Environmental Justice group, Global Community Monitor (GCM). An investigation of official records on file with the Regional Water Quality Board by an environmental law firm working with GCM (Lozeau-Drury of Alameda) uncovered the violations and a lack of enforcement. In such cases, citizens have the right to enforce pollution laws by taking their own legal action and work with the polluter directly to solve problems.
“Neighbors of the CASS facility have been reporting the blatant pollution from this facility for years and without much action to stop it,” said Denny Larson of GCM. “This legal action is needed to clean up CASS because the responsible agencies have failed to do their job and now it’s our turn.”
Documents on CASS revealed that levels of lead discharged were over four times the benchmark value for lead established by EPA. Levels of lead, zinc, copper, nickel, and pH discharged frequently exceeded Marine Water Quality Objectives established by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, San Francisco Bay Region. Further, during the 2008-2009 rainy season, CASS discharged storm water from un-monitored discharge locations that exceeded the EPA benchmark values for the many harmful pollutants, including oil and grease, aluminum, zinc, iron, copper, and lead.
The complaint filed today stated:
• CASS’s violations of the discharge, treatment technology, monitoring requirements, and other procedural and substantive requirements of the Permit and the Act are ongoing and continuous.
• The management practices at the Facility are wholly inadequate to prevent the sources of contamination described above from causing the discharge of pollutants to waters of the United States.
According to in the investigation, the CASS facility lacks:
• sufficient structural controls such as grading, berming, roofing, containment, or drainage structures to prevent rainfall and storm water flows from coming into contact with these and other exposed sources of contaminants
• sufficient structural controls to prevent the discharge of water once contaminated.
• adequate storm water pollution treatment technologies to treat storm water once contaminated.
• any controls to prevent the tracking and flow of pollutants onto adjacent public roads.
GCM seeks to require CASS to immediately implement storm water pollution control and treatment technologies and measures that are equivalent to Best Available Technology and prevent pollutants in the Facility’s storm water from contributing to violations of any water quality standards; order Defendant to comply with the Permit’s monitoring and reporting requirements, including ordering supplemental monitoring to compensate for past monitoring violations; and Order Defendant to pay civil penalties of $32,500 per day per violation for each violation of the Act
According to the investigation, during every rain event, storm water flows freely over exposed materials, waste products, and other accumulated pollutants at the CASS facility, becoming contaminated with oil and grease, aluminum, nickel, zinc, lead, iron, copper and other unmonitored pollutants at levels above applicable water quality standards. The storm water then flows untreated from CASS into municipal drain part of the City of Oakland storm drain system, which then flows into the Bay.
The investigation also discovered that each day since at least July 1, 2005 that CASS has falsely certified compliance with the General Permit.
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