Yvonne Chamberlain-Marquez (Stringfellow Acid Pits)
Stringfellow Acid Pits
For those who live in the Inland Empire, the sight of a giant metal woolly mammoth looming over highway 60 is familiar. Dinosaurs and other extinct creatures adorn the hillside, serving as a teaching tool for school children. Many probably have memories from spent time at the Jurupa Cultural Center as kids, learning about Earth Science from founder, Ruth Kirkby. What is seemingly absent from cultural memory is the toxic waste that sits less than a mile away in the Stringfellow Acid Pits. The Acid Pits were once home to over 32 million gallons of toxic chemicals, dumped by numerous corporations and the United States military. The chemicals penetrated through the ground and into the water supply of thousands of residents. During multiple heavy rain events, the pits overflowed sending the waste into neighborhoods and the local elementary school. Residents recalled their children playing in the foaming waste, making beards and throwing snowballs. Though now a SuperFund cleanup site, the problems associated with Stringfellow were largely ignored for decades. Had it not been for the initial activism of Ruth Kirkby and the later organizing by resident Penny Newman, The damage done to the people and the land of Glen Avon could have been substantially worse.
In researching this project I used books and articles but also relied heavily on primary documents for further analysis. The Brian Craig Book “Stringfellow Acid Pits” A Toxic and Legal Legacy provided an in depth look at the decades long legal battles between residents, local and state government entities, and major corporations, eventually making its way to the Supreme Court. The Island Press book “Forcing the Spring” by Robert Gottlieb helped to situate the feminist eco-activism of Penny Newman in a larger movement that began forming following the publication of Racheal Carson’s book “Silent Spring”. Several articles & book chapters written by Pitzer College professor, Dr. Brinda Sarathy were instrumental in understanding the impact that Stringfellow has had locally and its long term effect on the region. Glen Avon, the city that the Jurupa Mountains are in, is local to Riverside and there is a trove of primary documents available. I started by listening to nearly six hours of oral interviews given by Penny Newman. The Oral History archive at UCLA holds a particularly interesting set of interviews that were given over a year span. In them, Penny recalls her childhood, first moving to Glen Avon, the effects her activist work had on her family, and so much more. I read over 25 newspaper articles from the Press-Enterprise and the San Bernardino Sun, neither of which wrote extensively about Stringfellow until the lawsuits happened. At times, Penny Newman and Ruth Kirkby were featured as heroes, fighting for their community. Other articles painted them as reckless busybodies hell bent on causing trouble. Having full access to the newspapers also helped to situate each update historically, taking this fight from the Carter administration through the end of Obama’s. In addition to these documents, I was also able to look back on my own research to understand the local history that allowed the event to even happen. Knowing the shift from citrus to logistics helped make sense of why the State of California thought of the Inland Valley as a dumping ground. Lastly, I was able to visit the site in person. The pits themselves lie hidden behind rows of cars, there to be harvested for parts. There’s no sign warning of the hazardous materials. There’s no memorial to the work of Kirkby, Newman, and others. Most people driving by the area still have no idea what is there.
By 1952, Inland Empire governments were trying to bring in business to fill the void left by both the citrus industry and the sudden drop in war production. First Initiated by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, the idea of luring manufacturing by providing a dumping site began to permeate local politics. In 1955, Riverside County Board of Trade President, Carl Davis offered the solution during a meeting in which all members agree. Soon after, officials from the State of California approach Jame Stringfellow about turning his successful quarry into a Class I Hazardous Waste site. Concerned about its impacts, Stringfellow initially denies their requests but after an extremely flawed geological survey the state assures him that their plan is safe and on August 21, 1956 the quarry reopens as a dump site but officially keeps its moniker of “Stringfellow Quarry Company”.
That day kick started an environmental, social, and legal disaster that persists today. According to legal scholar and author Brian Craig, From the time that Stringfellow opened until its closure in 1972 “manufactures from California dumped more than 34 million gallons of industrial waste into the unlined Stringfellow ponds” These companies included McDonnell-Douglas, Montrose Chemical, Sunkist Growers, and Rockwell International and they deposited some of the most toxic chemicals in the world including hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acids, volatile organic compounds, and heavy metals such as lead and nickel. The effects of this were virtually unknown and scientists never accounted for what could happen by mixing these chemicals. These chemicals cause birth defects, cancer, asthma, and a host of other health problems. Most residents who were in the area when the change from Quarry to Acid Pits happened were completely unaware of what had moved in. The largely working class community had now idea how these chemicals could affect them or what the environmental impacts were . Residents were never consulted or educated on what this could mean for their community. It would take several years and the activism of a group of women to bring this travesty to light.
As this was happening, the community of Glen Avon began to grow. In 1969, Penny Newman and husband moved into the area hoping to recapture the rural lifestyle that she had grown up with. In her 2006 interview with UCLA Professor Jane Collings, Newman recounts falling in love with her home and knowing it was the right place to start a family. Less than a year later, tragedy struck when Penny had her first miscarrriage. When this happened, in 1968, dumping had been ongoing for nearly eight years. Previous flooding had sent waste into neighborhoods into sewers, ground water, and the nearby Santa Ana River. Some older kids in the area even used paddle canoes in some of the reservoirs and pits having no idea of the dangers below them. The community was being exposed to these chemicals and most had no idea. It wasn’t until Glen Avon resident, mom, and trained geologist Ruth Kirkby began to sound the alarm that people began becoming aware. After severe flooding sent waste into neighborhoods Kirkby approached Newman during a PTA meeting and demanded that she clear the agenda to discuss Stringfellow. In another UCLA oral interview, Penny Newman recounts Ruth as a “grumpy old lady that no one wanted to work with” so she refused, something that she later regretted. Ruth Kirkby was written off by local government officials as a “hysterical housewife” who was getting excited over nothing. Despite being ignored and mocked, Kirkby went on to form the Parents of Jurupa, which would lead a successful effort to close the pits. In 1971, fires broke out at the pits unleashing small rivers of waste into the community. In 1972 the Riverside County Air Pollution Control District warned the site that they were violating local pollution laws caused from the paint strippers and paint sludge. A few months later hexavalent chrome was found in the groundwater at Glen Avon Elementary School. That seemed to be the final straw for the community and later that year the pits were permanently closed for dumping. The 32 million gallons of toxic waste remained however, and the incident that sparked decades of legal battles hadn’t even happened yet.
The next question from the community was how the state intended to clean up the mess and who would be responsible. A intense battle of finger pointing began between the County of Riverside, the State Water Board, and James Stringfellow. Initial studies that were conducted estimated that clean up would cost between $200,000 - $400,000. Leakage was continuing to spill into groundwater but all three entities refused to take responsibility. In 1974 Stringfellow abandoned the site, turning control over to the regional water board who then requested inquiries into the financial position of Stringfellow, who was found to be broke. This back and forth persisted until a second study of the area was done in 1977 and the regional water board made the following recommendations to encapsulate the material by “ (1) injecting gel into fissures in the underlying bedrock (2) installing monitoring and interceptor wells to locate and extract the downstream contaminated plume; and (3) installing a clay cap over the site. Despite the recommendations, the pits remained as they were into the next year when a “50 year” flood overtook the region.
Initial heavy rains in the area sent Stringfellow officials into a panic. They first tried to alleviate the spillage by digging additional ponds to help with overflow. Days later, waste water began to breach the dam and the National Guard was called in to assist. Soon the retention dam began to fail and the entire downstream area was in danger. The State of California had two choices “(1) allow the dam to break, which would result in an uncontrolled release of up to 20 million gallons or (2) release some of the waste in a series of controlled discharges through a spillway. Without notifying a single resident or recommending an evacuation, state officials began a slow release of 1 million gallons of diluted waste down the Pyrite Creek Canyon into the Glen Avon community.
Penny Newman recalls this day in several of her interviews. She states her disbelief at the government intentionally causing harm to residents “The government wouldn’t do something to hurt us” she repeatedly recollected. The government, however, was fully aware of what happened and tried to hide it from the community. Teachers at Glen Avon elementary were alerted to what happened and were told to keep the information from parents. Soon after, residents started developing a number of health issues including Newman’s children who had asthma and chronic headaches. Residents were constantly nauseous, suffered respiratory issues, and developed unexplained rashes. It became clear to Penny Newman that this was a lifelong issue for them. The waste that the community were exposed to changed their DNA, both figuratively and literally.
It didn’t take long for other residents to form the Concerned Neighbors in Action group to start demanding cleanup and compensation. The group, lead by Newman, began pressing state officials for answers.The group was mostly blue collar white and latinex women who had never engaged in the political process before 1978. Their activism was driven by the need to protect their families and to stop something that they understood affected everyone. The women organized and educated themselves. They congregated with dictionaries and encyclopedias trying to decipher environmental and legal reports. They showed up in droves to city and county meetings. They showed up on the doorsteps of politicians and polluters to demand accountability. Penny Newman attributes the groups success to making sure that they had a voice in what happened in the community “We wanted to make sure the people affected by the problem were the ones defining what the solutions would be”, she stated in a 2010 Inlandia Institute interview. Through this unintentional ecofeminist activism, the residents of Glen Avon were able to bring the largest civil lawsuit against major polluters in US history. They were instrumental in establishing Stringfellow as the first clean up site following the passage of the SuperFund law. Penny Newman went on to found the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice which continues to serve the Inland Empire. The founding principles of community care, government transparency, and environmental justice carry on in the work that they do today.
These two photos together help narrate a story without words. They illustrate the longevity of both Penny Newman’s dedication to Stringfellow and the length of the cleanup itself. The first photo shows Newman outside of the Stringfellow pits during the early 1980s. In the photo, her expression seems worried, almost unsure of what she is doing there. It was a personal photo of Newman’s, taken by a fellow activist. In contrast, the second photo is from a Press-Enterprise article at the 2016 opening of a $52 million on-site treatment plant. This silver haired Penny Newman stands behind a red ribbon, about to speak to an audience of state officials, scientists, and longtime residents of Glen Avon. She is now an expert on the site, having holistic knowledge of it. By 2016 she is the executive director for CCAEJ, has published several articles, and has worked at the national level to curb environmental violence. Together, the photos assert Newman’s importance to the story of Stringfellow.
The story of Stringfellow Acid Pits is long and complicated. It involves state sanctioned environmental violence, intersectional ecofeminist organizing , motherhood, capitalism, and government corruption. The litigation that it spurned cases set precedent for decades to come and was instrumental in making it the first Super Fund site in the United States. The civil trial smashed records for the length of time and total payout, though that means very little to the families who lost people due to reckless negligence. A 1984 study of the area concluded that the area around Stringfellow saw an abnormally high amount of birth defects compared to the Riverside county. According to the UCR scientists who conducted the study, the effects will never fully be known as babies were unable to show signs of speech or motor display. It is vital to understand that the work to shutdown and contain Stringfellow all stemmed from mothers watching their children be poisoned by the state of California. While the men of Glen Avon urged the women to remain silent and let their contaminated homes become someone else’s problem, the women refused to make it somebody else’s problem. Penny Newman’s early environmental activism made it possible for generations of Inland Empire residents to become active participants in the political process. CCAEJ continues to work through an intersectional feminist framework that fights for the rights of all living things in Glen Avon and beyond.
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“Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice.” CCAEJ. Accessed March 19, 2021. https://www.ccaej.org/.
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