LOS ANGELES — Just over a mile from where Patricia Flores has lived for almost 20 years, a battery smelter plant spewed toxic elements into the environment for nearly a century.
Exide Technologies in southeast Los Angeles polluted thousands of properties with lead and contributed to groundwater contamination with trichloroethylene, or TCE, a cancer-causing chemical.
Since Exide declared bankruptcy in 2020, California has invested more than $770 million to clean the various properties. But much more cleanup is needed, and with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, those efforts are uncertain.
“The groundwater that was found to have TCE is spreading,” Flores said in Spanish. “It’s not just going to affect us; other people will also be impacted by the contamination. And it is worrying that we won’t be added to the priority list for the cleanup to be done.”
Residents, environmental advocates, and state and federal lawmakers have urged the Environmental Protection Agency to list Exide as a Superfund site, which would unlock federal resources for long-term, permanent cleanup. Last year, the EPA determined the plant qualifies due to TCE in the groundwater, which advocates worry is tainting drinking water.
But toxic cleanup experts say the Trump administration could make it harder for hazardous sites to get designated, create a backlog, reduce program funding and loosen contamination standards.
The goal of the Superfund program, begun more than four decades ago, is to clean the nation’s most contaminated sites to protect the environment and people — often in low-income areas and communities of color. After a site is added to the National Priorities List, crews evaluate the contamination, create a cleanup plan and execute it. Once that happens, the EPA deletes the site from the list, and it could then be redeveloped. There are currently 1,341 Superfund sites, according to EPA figures from December.
In a statement to The Associated Press, EPA spokeswoman Molly Vaseliou said the agency “is putting together a leadership team composed of some of the brightest experts and legal minds of their fields, all of whom will uphold EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment.”
