They left the plant on a 1996 permit and called it more accountable. I know the sentence. It is what an oversight board says when it has caught the regulator it oversees getting the paperwork wrong, has said so out loud in a public hearing, and has then handed the paperwork back to the same regulator and let the plant keep running on a permit that expired when I still owned a Discman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the record. CalMatters reported Oct. 23, 2026, that for nearly 30 years an electronic waste processor in Los Angeles County, Phibro-Tech, has operated on a permit that expired in 1996, while neighbors \u2014 some living 550 feet away \u2014 say it harms their community. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control renewed that permit last year, for the first time in the facility\u2019s history. The same department recorded 29 violations at the plant between 2013 and 2022, for things like failing to clean up leaks and treating waste its permit doesn\u2019t allow; officials say the facility has since improved, but the state is still suing over alleged violations of hazardous waste laws. A neighborhood group, Neighbors Against Phibro-Tech, represented by Earthjustice, appealed the renewal to the Board of Environmental Safety \u2014 a board lawmakers created in 2022 to address the department\u2019s history of flawed oversight. It was the first time in the board\u2019s five-year history that residents asked it to pull a facility\u2019s permit. On Thursday, Oct. 22, the board agreed with the neighbors that the record was incomplete and that the department didn\u2019t show it completely reviewed the company\u2019s compliance history. The board chair, Andrew Rakestraw, put it plainly: the department itself \u201crecognizes that there\u2019s a significant concern for (Phibro-Tech\u2019s) ability or willingness to comply,\u201d and \u201cwhat I would have expected to see here is some connection between this significant concern \u2026 and their subsequent decision to grant this permit.\u201d Then the board voted to let the facility keep operating while regulators reassess. The board\u2019s attorney, Greg Forest, said it has the authority to ask the department to deny permits. The board didn\u2019t discuss that option. Earthjustice attorney Byron Chan: \u201cThey agreed with us that permitting violated the law in three different ways in issuing this permit. How many illegal acts does permitting have to do until (the board denies) the permit?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now the defense, and there are two of them, because there are two defendants of a sort. The department\u2019s permitting chief, Wayne Lorentzen, told the board the complete record \u201cwas accessible to the public and contained the documents that permitting relied on and considered when making its permit decision,\u201d and that it \u201cprovides specific evidence to refute the allegation\u201d that the department ignored the compliance history. The company says the opposite problem: in a 2024 cross-complaint it argued the department \u201cinspected (Phibro-Tech) over the past (10 years) considerably more frequently than other permitted facilities\u201d and \u201cdisproportionately cited\u201d it as a result. The board granted the company\u2019s appeals too, telling the department to justify why it issued a five-year permit instead of the ten the company wanted and to remove waste-treatment rules that don\u2019t apply; board member Rhys Williams said, \u201cWhat we\u2019re asking for is not a specific term, but to show the work.\u201d A week before the hearing, the company and regulators settled a separate dispute by extending the plant\u2019s tank certification from three years to five, which Chan said undermined the appeal process; the department didn\u2019t comment on that. The renewed permit is paused while the appeals continue \u2014 which means the plant runs on the original one. Rakestraw, in a statement, said the board has made the department \u201cmore fiscally stable, more transparent, and more accountable to the public,\u201d and also: \u201cMany stakeholders view the board as California\u2019s hazardous waste watchdog. In reality \u2026 we have decision-making authority in a handful of areas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deb says she has a grocery coupon that expired in 1996 and the store still won\u2019t take it, so she would like to know which counter Phibro-Tech uses. Buck says he ran a riding mower for thirty years on one spark plug and called it maintenance. I love them. They are seasoning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMore accountable\u201d is the alibi. The 1996 is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. The state\u2019s whole theory of itself is that the permit is the leash: you may handle the dangerous thing because we wrote down the terms, and when the terms run out, so do you. Here the terms ran out before the internet was in most kitchens, and the leash turned out to be a suggestion that renews itself by staying in a drawer. The state built a regulator. The regulator failed for long enough that the state built a board to watch the regulator. The board watched, found the regulator broke the law three ways by the neighbors\u2019 lawyers\u2019 count, said through its own chair that it expected to see a connection it did not find, handed the work back to the regulator, and gave itself thirty days to write that down. Meanwhile the plant hums. I am not recruiting the company as the wronged party; its complaint is that the thermometer kept reading a fever. I am not asking for a softer statute or a harder one; the one on the books already says the permit expires. I am asking why a bureaucracy that can find me in a week when a form is late cannot find a 1996 expiration date in thirty years. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask, out loud, what in your county is still running on paper that died before your kids were born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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