California’s Largest Toxic Cleanup Is Failing, Lead-Poisoned Locals Say

A sign outside a shuttered Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Commerce, Calif., on Jan. 31, 2020. The plant was the source of lead and arsenic pollution covering neighborhoods in the surrounding 1.7 miles. Chris Karr/The Epoch Times

LOS ANGELES—On the outer walls of Resurrection Church in Los Angeles, signs in English and Spanish advertised free blood testing for lead. Inside the church on Jan. 31, a State Assembly committee met to discuss the progress of California’s largest toxic cleanup.

The cleanup, which began in 2017, includes the removal of lead-tainted soil from thousands of properties around a shuttered Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in the city of Commerce, just south of Los Angeles.