A coalition of environmental justice groups announced Wednesday it will sue Kings County over its decision in December to approve the landfill expansion proposed by Waste Management at its Kettleman Hills Facility.

The suit will allege the expansion was approved through a process that was discriminatory to nearby residents, coalition leaders said.

The announcement was made at a press conference held inside the county administration building, where residents from Kettleman City and activists stood side by side holding demonstration signs. The suit will be filed today, the groups said.

The lawsuit, which seeks to block the project, brings up several issues that have previously been raised by opponents, including the fact that the decision was made before an investigation into a birth-defect cluster reported by residents. The suit claims that the county decision violated state law.

"It was unjust to our town; it was unjust to our people; it was unjust to the children who have been born ill and have died in Kettleman City," said Maricela Mares-Alatorre, spokeswoman for the Kettleman City group. "No investigation was made into why children are dying in our town prior to granting that permit. We want justice for Kettleman City."

In response to the pending lawsuit, county officials said the claims in the suit are baseless.

"There is no basis for these allegations," said Deputy County Counsel Kyle Sand. "The county has conducted a full environmental review and presented all the pertinent environmental documents to the decision-makers."

Waste Management officials say they will stand by the county's decision and stressed that the company has gone above and beyond to ensure the public is aware of what's going on.

"Waste Management stands by Kings County's rigorous environmental review of our project and stand behind the Planning Commission's vote to approve our project and the Board of Supervisors' vote to deny the appeal and uphold the commission decision," said Helen Luibel Herrera, company spokeswoman.

"For the past four years, county staff has been working with the environmental quality experts to come up with an EIR that's been circulated to the public. Waste Management has committed exhaustive outreach to inform the community.

"We have translated out executive summaries and every redraft along the way, conducted public meetings where we provided simultaneous translations to make sure all community concerns are addressed both in English and Spanish," Herrera said.

The suit alleges that the county decision violated state environmental law because it failed to take into account any analysis of an unexplained cluster of birth defects and that the county committed a "prejudicial abuse of discretion" through inadequate analyses of cumulative impacts from off-site diesel emission and the proposed Avenal power plant.

The groups also accuse the county of violating state civil rights law by failing to try to lessen health impacts in Kettleman has a discriminatory effect.

Ingrid Brostrom, attorney with the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, representing opposition groups, said they would seek a temporary injunction against the county permit as part of the suit. A ruling on the case may take six to 18 months, she said.

The lawsuit is the latest development in the long-standing saga involving environmental activists, Waste Management and the county, a local approving authority, over the West's largest toxic waste facility owned and operated by the company.

Waste Management plans to expand an existing hazardous waste landfill and build a new 64-acre landfill. The company says the project is necessary and important for the region because it will extend the Kettleman Hills Facility's hazardous waste capacity by more than 30 years.

But many Kettleman City residents are angry. Their anger has been prompted by county supervisors' decision on Dec. 23 to approve the landfill expansion, despite concerns that Waste Management planned to accept radioactive soil from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory and concerns over an unusually high incidence of birth defects reported by nearby residents.

The radioactive waste issue was resolved last week when Waste Management announced it had voluntarily dropped plans to accept nuclear materials from the former rocket and nuclear test facility following a lawsuit threat.

But the birth-defect concerns remain unresolved. The state recently rejected a county request to conduct a door-to-door investigation to identify possible causes of the reported health anomalies, although officials with the Department of Public Health say they are prepared to report updated birth defect statistical findings for Kettleman City in coming weeks.

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(Jan. 21, 2010)