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Nancy Smith remembered that children had called it “the sick land” the wedge of property alongside the 110 Freeway where a dry cleaning facility had laundered aprons and uniforms for decades across from a Lincoln Heights elementary school.
“We were all up in arms about it because of the children getting sick,” said Smith, who has lived in the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood for more than half a century.
Decades after the old Welch’s laundry was shuttered, California regulators worked to clean up the soil and check the groundwater for the
chemicals used there volatile organic compounds such as tetrachloroethylene that could damage the human liver and nervous system and have been tied to an increased risk of cancer. The Department of Toxic Substances Control oversaw a cleanup effort that lasted for years and has continued to monitor groundwater at the site.
Lincoln Heights activists wanted to fight gentrification, so they became local politicians Listen 10 min MORE A view of the Los Angeles skyline from Lincoln Heights, where a group of local activists joined their neighborhood council to try to prevent gentrification. Photo by By Nick Fox/Shutterstock.
In the Lincoln Heights neighborhood near Dodger Stadium, housing pushed a group of activists to do something radical: join their local government.
Lincoln Heights Intel (LHI), a group of residents and organizers, was spurred into action by Avenue 34, a five-acre, 468-unit apartment complex featuring lots of retail space. Residents were concerned about being displaced and inhaling toxic fumes potentially emitted by the complex’s construction.