Rancho LPG, Jones Chemicals and Harbor Gateway Street Takeovers Finally Face a More Aggressive City ResponseBy Rick Thomas, Columnist
For years, residents across Los Angeles City Council District 15 have been told that their public-safety concerns were being reviewed, studied, referred, discussed, and monitored.
That vocabulary has become painfully familiar.
What residents have seen far less often is decisive action.
That is why three major issues now moving through City Hall deserve attention: the Rancho LPG facility in San Pedro, JCI Jones Chemicals, Inc. in Harbor Gateway, and the recurring street takeovers around Figueroa Street and Alondra Boulevard.
Councilmember Tim McOsker is now pushing the City toward a far more aggressive response on all three.
And after years of community pressure, that response is overdue.
Rancho LPG and Jones Chemicals: The City Is Finally Asking the Question Residents Have Been Asking for Years
The most consequential action is Council File 26-0794, which addresses both Rancho LPG Holdings in San Pedro and JCI Jones Chemicals in Harbor Gateway.
The motion does not merely ask whether the facilities are complying with current regulations.
It directs the Department of City Planning, Department of Building and Safety, Los Angeles Fire Department, City Attorney, and other relevant agencies to evaluate whether Los Angeles can limit, discontinue, phase out, revoke, or withhold permits, declare the facilities public nuisances, or otherwise curtail their operations.
That is not bureaucratic housekeeping.
That is the City formally asking what legal pathway exists to substantially reduce or potentially end these hazardous industrial uses.
The motion also asks the City to identify a clear legal and regulatory pathway toward closure or discontinuation, determine whether the facilities retain vested or legal nonconforming-use rights, identify available nuisance-abatement and enforcement authority, and determine whether the
City can deny future discretionary approvals or impose conditions designed to protect public health and safety.
For residents who have spent years hearing variations of “we are looking into it,” this is a significant shift.
But it should never have taken this long.
Rancho LPG: How Long Should a Community Be Asked to Live With Catastrophic Risk?
The fight over Rancho LPG is not new.
San Pedro residents have raised concerns for years about massive quantities of liquefied petroleum gas stored near homes, businesses, transportation corridors and Port infrastructure.
At some point, government has to stop acting as though the existence of regulations automatically settles the question of public safety.
It does not.
A hazardous facility can be heavily regulated and still be located in the wrong place.
That is the central issue.
The motion itself acknowledges that hazardous-material facilities operating near residential neighborhoods, schools, businesses, transportation corridors, and critical infrastructure create serious public-safety concerns.
For years, nearby residents have effectively been asked to trust that every valve, system, procedure, employee, inspection, and emergency safeguard will work every single time.
That is an extraordinary burden to place on a community.
The question should not simply be whether Rancho LPG can legally continue operating under existing conditions.
The question is whether any elected official would deliberately approve this kind of facility in that location today.
If the answer is no, then City Hall has an obligation to confront what should happen next.
Jones Chemicals: Harbor Gateway Has Waited Long Enough
The same basic question now confronts Harbor Gateway.
JCI Jones Chemicals has operated at 1401 W. Del Amo Boulevard since 1957 and handles chemicals used in municipal water and wastewater treatment.
The company argues that its products are essential to public infrastructure and that its operations are subject to extensive regulation.
That is part of the story.
It is not the entire story.
The other part is that residents live only blocks away from a facility that handles chlorine and other hazardous chemicals.
And residents have every right to ask why that land use remains acceptable.
The question has never been whether chlorine is useful.
The question is whether hazardous chemical handling on this scale belongs next to residential neighborhoods.
Those are two completely different questions, and for too long the first has been used to avoid answering the second.
McOsker’s motion specifically states that Rancho LPG and Jones Chemicals have outstanding violations or ongoing compliance and enforcement matters and that the City must examine every available mechanism to eliminate or substantially reduce the risks associated with a catastrophic industrial incident.
That language is important.
It also raises an obvious question: If the City believes the risk is serious enough to examine closure, nuisance-abatement powers, permit revocation and discontinuation, why did residents have to fight so hard to get this level of attention in the first place?
Government should not require years of community pressure before treating a potentially catastrophic public-safety concern like a potentially catastrophic public-safety concern.
Reports Are Worthless Unless Someone Acts on Them
There is also one problem with nearly every City Hall motion.
A motion can sound powerful and still disappear into bureaucracy.
The departments report back.
The report is received and filed.
Another committee discusses it.
Someone requests additional information.
Months pass.
Residents continue living next to the same problem.
That cannot happen here.
The motion calls for reports within 15 days.
Then the City needs to act on what those reports say.
If legal authority exists to impose stronger conditions, use it.
If permits can be denied or withheld, identify which ones.
If nuisance proceedings are appropriate, explain exactly how they begin.
If operations can legally be phased out, provide the process and timetable.
If the City lacks authority, tell the public precisely why and identify what change in state or federal law would be required.
What residents do not need is another stack of paper explaining why everyone remains concerned.
We already know everyone is concerned.
The issue now is what government intends to do about it.
Street Takeovers: Stop Making Taxpayers Pay for Criminal Behavior
The third issue is different, but the governmental failure has often looked remarkably similar.
Residents near Figueroa Street and Alondra Boulevard have dealt with recurring street takeovers involving reckless driving, burnouts, blocked intersections, speeding, crowds, and damage to public streets.
These events are sometimes treated as if they are merely an annoyance.
They are not.
They are organized criminal activity taking place on public streets.
People can be injured or killed. Emergency vehicles can be blocked. Roads can be damaged.
Residents can be trapped in their own neighborhoods.
McOsker’s motion directs LAPD, working with LADOT and the City Attorney, to identify additional enforcement tools, greater use of vehicle impoundment, investigative technology to identify organizers and participants, and roadway modifications that could make takeover locations more difficult to use.
All of that makes sense.
But perhaps the most obvious provision is this: When participants destroy public property, make them pay for it.
The motion calls on the City to pursue every lawful avenue to recover the cost of repairing public infrastructure from those responsible.
That should have been standard policy already.
If someone destroys an intersection doing donuts for a cellphone video, why should residents of Los Angeles pay to repair it?
Impound the vehicle where legally authorized.
Identify the organizers.
Use investigative technology.
Increase enforcement.
Recover damages.
Consequences should fall on the people creating the danger, not the taxpayers forced to live with it.
Credit Where It Is Due, But Results Are What Matter
Tim McOsker deserves credit for putting stronger options on the table.
I have criticized him and other City officials when I believed government was moving too slowly on Jones Chemicals and other Harbor Gateway public-safety issues.
That criticism was warranted.
It is equally fair to recognize when an elected official responds. This Councilmember actually went to the affected area at 2 am to witness this street takeover issue…in person.
These motions represent a stronger posture than residents have seen in the past, particularly the willingness to ask whether Rancho LPG and Jones Chemicals can ultimately be curtailed, phased out, or discontinued.
But elected officials are not hired to introduce impressive-sounding motions.
They are hired to produce results.
A Council file is not public safety.
A departmental report is not public safety.
A committee discussion is not public safety.
Residents are safer only when conditions on the ground actually change.
City Hall Has Identified the Problems; Now Finish the Job
There is a common thread running through Rancho LPG, Jones Chemicals, and street takeovers. In all three cases, residents identified the problem long before government delivered an adequate response.
That is ass backwards.
Communities should not have to become amateur investigators, regulatory experts, land-use attorneys and public-safety advocates simply to force City Hall to perform its basic responsibilities.
Residents should not have to spend years proving that a dangerous situation deserves attention.
They should not have to repeatedly show up at meetings, write emails, make public comments, and demand reports before government decides to use the authority it already possesses.
The City now has three opportunities to show that it has learned something.
For Rancho LPG, determine whether a hazardous industrial use of this scale remains acceptable where it currently operates.
For Jones Chemicals, stop treating proximity to residential neighborhoods as a secondary concern and confront the land-use question directly.
For street takeovers, impose consequences severe enough that participants understand Harbor Gateway is not their private racetrack.
Tim McOsker has opened the door.
Now City departments, the City Attorney, and the rest of the City Council have to walk through it. Because after all the motions, meetings, reports, and promises, residents are entitled to ask one very simple question:
When does government stop studying the problem and start solving it?
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