The story comes from KCLU’s podcast The One Oh One. You can listen to the full episode here.
Odette Moran is a local activist – Moran uses they/them pronouns and they like to take people on a very specific kind of walking tour in Oxnard.
“Come and do a toxic tour with us. Learn what's here in South Oxnard,” said Moran.
Moran is a Youth and Young Adult Organizer with CAUSE in Ventura County – that stands Central Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy.
They stand on the sidewalk at the end of a long road that goes through the industrial heart of this coastal city. We’re in the southern part of Oxnard on the border with the City of Port Hueneme.
From this spot you can see and hear industry in every direction.
Going on a ‘toxic tour’
“The sounds in this area, part of the big buzzing sound is our local paper mill, the New Indie container factory where they recycle containers, and we have about 100 truckloads come in and out of this space every single day,” said Moran. “There's right in front of that, we have the wastewater facility. So all of the City of Oxnard’s human waste comes this way to be processed.”
There’s a fenced off empty piece of land behind Moran. It looks like a lot of sand has been piled up on this space.
“This is the Halaco Superfund site. This is a site that's so contaminated that the federal government needs to come and clean it up. It used to be a smelting place where they used to melt together different metals and over time,” said Moran. “And instead of cleaning it up, they just put a giant pile of sand on top of it to protect from the radioactive materials that were leftover. That's what we have in the background.”
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says waste on this site includes high levels of aluminum, magnesium, and other metals. There’s even waste that contains radioactive radium. The federal agency stabilized this site in 2015 so that toxic rain runoff doesn’t escape from the location, but a proper clean-up is still needed with the EPA still evaluating its options.
Nearby a man pushes a supermarket trolley towards a nearby homeless encampment. Even more worrying is he pulls back a gap in the fence that leads to the superfund site.
“There's actually a few holes in the fence here to the Superfund site, because unfortunately, a lot of people do live in this space,” said Moran.
And it's not just those experiencing homelessness who live nearby.
“We have a lot of homes, South Winds and South Oxnard is one of the most populated areas in Ventura County. And especially with this housing crisis there's a lot of families living in a single space,” said Moran.
The population in Oxnard is predominantly Latino and Hispanic – over 75% in fact.
And in addition to the humans and the industry that occupy this space – there is endangered wildlife. We’re actually right next to the beach and a wetland which is home to the western snowy plover (a tiny bird that lives on the beach) and the tidewater goby (a two-inch long fish that lives in coastal lagoons).
I take a walk away from the street in the direction of the beach. Crossing a small bridge, I’m now surrounded by the tall reeds of the wetland.
But it doesn’t quite feel like you’re immersed in nature as looking into the distance you can still see an industrial port littered with cranes and smokestacks from a nearby power plant.
“Over to our left, you can see the tops of the cranes from the Port of Hueneme. Those cranes are being used to take out all the shipping containers off of the ships and then transported over to diesel trucks that are running up and down these roads 24/7,” said Lucia Marquez.
Marquez is the associate policy director, also with CAUSE.
“And then to the furthest right, you can see the tops of the Ormond Beach Generating Station, a natural gas power plant that's usually running during the hot summer days to create energy for all of this region,” said Marquez.
Marquez describes this spot like an industrial wall — a line of warehouses and industrial buildings almost cutting locals off from the beach and wetland.
“There's a really huge restoration project planned for this to open up public access. But unfortunately, a lot of the community has not been able to be engaged or even know about it because they just see this industry and they don't think that this land belongs to them. It doesn’t feel like this is public land for public access,” said Marquez.
What does the data say?
These organizers and activists say this area is a toxic soup. And there is data to back this up.
The state has an interactive map that you can use to see how bad air pollution is in your census tract. Most of Ventura County shows up as different shades of green – meaning very little pollution. But neighbors Oxnard and Port Hueneme – both majority Latino and Hispanic cities – are mostly reds and oranges meaning a lot of pollution.
The map breaks down sources. For the area around our toxic tour there are high readings for toxic releases (from facilities) and diesel fumes (from all the ships and trucks coming to these facilities). There’s also a lot of pesticides (Oxnard is also a hub for commercial farming).
But many of these industries are part of the identity of this area and are critical to the local economy. Manufacturing and agriculture are top industries in Ventura County.
The name Oxnard in fact comes from a family that built a factory here at the end of the 19th century for processing sugar beets. Today, commercial farm fields go on for miles and agriculture is a major local industry.
The Port of Hueneme was originally created to help farmers transport their produce. Today it continues as a strategic port bringing in cargo like bananas and new cars for the region.
Located on the beach, not far south from the port is the Ormond Beach Generating Station. This plant is important to California as a whole. For years the state had promised to retire the natural gas plant because of concerns about the air pollution it creates, but that end date keeps getting pushed along. Just a couple of months ago the state voted to extend the life of the plant again – for another three years until 2026. The reason: officials say the power plant is still needed as backup during periods of high energy demand, like major heat waves, because there isn’t enough renewal energy to take the plant’s place yet.
Doing something about the air pollution
So, let’s now talk about what’s being done about these main sources of air pollution – the toxic releases, the pesticides and diesel fumes.
We’ve learned some things are not going to get better for now – like the Ormond beach plant staying open longer. But our organizers are very motivated to keep working on it.
Here’s Lucia Marquez again, first talking about the plant.
“Once we get close to that three year mark, I know that this community is going to be really engaged,” said Marquez. “We're going to be working over this the rest of this year and ongoing to make sure that it's a promise they can't take back.”
For pesticide use, there are already rules around what you can spray and when. But Marquez would prefer a push towards supporting more organic farming.
“And so for us – pesticides, they pollute our soil, they pollute our water, they drift into the air and we breathe in those chemicals,” said Marquez. “Ideally, we would like to be able to not be exposed to that. And the best way to do that is organic farms. But that costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time for a farm to be certified.”
Diesel pollution is also on the list of issues they want to address. And the state has taken some action to address those concerns.
“The main trucking route is along [a] residential area and it passes multiple schools. Let's move that trucking route and avoid where people live,” said Marquez.
By 2035, for example, all trucks entering seaports and certain rail yards in the state must be zero-emission. California will also end the sales of gasoline and diesel trucks by 2036.
For the Port of Hueneme itself. Here’s part of what organizers want to see happen…
“Trying to bring in more electrification infrastructure into the port, you know, let's not let those ships idle. Let's allow them to plug in. They already have some of those programs, but let's expand it and make it as clean as possible.
In an email exchange with the Port of Hueneme they told me – yes, currently certain ships do already plug into onshore power and turn off their diesel engines once they arrive at the port. For the other ships they are working on getting more to plug in or use a system where an emissions filter attaches to the smokestack of the ship and filters out pollutants. They aim to have this active beginning of 2025.
There is also an initiative to install solar panels at the port that they say will offset a ‘significant’ amount of power drawn from the grid.
Ultimately, the port says its own cargo operations (that’s things inside the port itself – like cranes and forklifts) will be at zero emissions by 2030.
I reached out to the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District, which works on federal and state air quality standards about Oxnard and Port Hueneme.
In an email they say local air quality has improved tremendously over the decades – in fact, the amount of days a year the county goes over federal standards has gone down from over 170 days in the late 1980s to just nine days in 2021.
Looking at the current situation for Oxnard and Port of Hueneme though – they are hoping that continued efforts around things that have worked in the past and new programs will directly improve air quality further.
The impact on locals
So, some sources of air pollution are definitely expected to decrease in the coming years. But many of these improvements require long waits – many years.
In the meantime activists and locals, many of whom live in these heavily polluted areas, remain pretty emotional about the topic.
“When I think of pollution in Oxnard, I think of the environmental racism that we experience on a day to day basis,” said Yocelyn Gomez.
16-year-old Gomez is referring here to the large Latino and Hispanic population that live in this area. Gomez is part of an environmental justice youth group at CAUSE.
“I think of how elected officials that represent this area aren't doing our community justice. As they allow this power plant to continue to pollute the entirety of Oxnard,” said Gomez. “They're targeting our community and they feel that we as Oxnard don't have the power to put a stop to it. Since we are a community of mostly hardworking immigrants and they feel like we don't have that power to stop them and they think they can get away with it.”
She says her family used to live in South Oxnard but moved to Port Hueneme to get away, specifically, from the Ormond Beach Power Plant and other polluting facilities.
“My older sister, she was born with several respiratory diseases,” said Gomez. “They used to live around less than half a mile away from the power plant… where the power plant and all of these other industries are located. And the reason they moved out of South Oxnard was because my older sister needed cleaner air and South Oxnard just wasn't like providing that.”
Gomez says she speaks out because not everybody has the means to move away from Oxnard.
“So I think it's not about getting people out of South Oxnard, but getting these industries out of South Oxnard, getting rid of these power plants, these industries, or at least managing them in a way where they don't affect the community in the way that they do,” said Gomez.
Another youth activist – 16-year-old Angeles Garcia – lives in South Oxnard. She says her mother is a farm worker who has experienced respiratory health issues while working in the area.
“She ended up moving to another field and that field was further away from the power plant. And it didn't go away right away but I imagine the combination of the power plant being so close to her work as well as the pesticides and all that caused whatever happened in her lungs,” said Garcia.
Through their advocacy group, these activists want to make sure their community is informed about pollution. Something Garcia says she didn’t always know about.
“My community deserves to know what's going on,” Garcia said. “When I would go to the beach with my family members or on my own, I'd look at the power plant and I'd be like, ‘What is that? I don't know what it is.’ It's just smoke. I didn't view it as a problem”.
They’ve taken petitions to apartment complexes. They spoke in front of the California Energy Commission. And to owners of the local power plant.
They weren’t able to close the plant this time, but they say they’re going to continue working on it.
“My ultimate goal would be to make South Oxnard a city that has clean air,” said Garcia.
Back at the end of our toxic tour, as diesel trucks roar past and smoke billows out of the nearby warehouse stacks, organizer Odette Moran says it all feels very personal to them.
“I think overwhelm is a very descriptive word that describes how I feel on a daily basis,” said Moran. “I grew up here. This is my home town. I have lived in the same street for a long time. My family has been migrating to that same street for a long time, so I feel a lot of love.”
Ironically Moran says their family moved to Oxnard in the hope of getting away from pollution. Moran was born in Mexico City – premature with small lungs.
Moran says hope lies in California’s transition to renewable energy.
But they want to make sure that as that happens, their community is not left behind.
“I want to specifically ask Governor Newsom to ensure that our communities are being thought of in a less sacrificial way,” Moran said, holding back tears. “We matter, our lives matter, our hopes matter, and we should be striving to… transitioning now and as soon as we can in the best responsible way to minimize impacts to our or immigrant families.”
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