Opponents of Brush Ceramic Products have one last chance to block adoption of a new county air quality permit for the plant when they present their appeal to the independent five-member Air Quality Hearing Board on Dec. 21.

Environmental Justice Action Group, a small advocacy organization based in Portland, Ore., and lapidary vendor Rob Kulakofsky, who also operates the Tucson-based Center for Environmental Connections with business partner Faith Spaulding, are asking the hearing board to reject the final air quality permit, issued in November by the Pima Department of Environmental Quality (PDEQ).

County attorneys will be defending the PDEQ plan, which requires Brush to continue stack emissions testing and ambient air quality monitoring, to assure the community that the facility continues to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for emission of beryllium. In addition, as part of a voluntary agreement with the county, Brush will pay $80,000 per year to the department, half the cost of maintaining six ambient air quality monitors, to be operated by PDEQ at Sunnyside Unified School District schools near the plant, 6100 S. Tucson Blvd.

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An exotic but naturally occurring mineral, beryllium oxide can cause lung-damaging acute and chronic beryllium disease if inhaled by the approximately one-in-20 people allergic to the substance. Brush Ceramics, a division of Brush Engineered Materials Corp. in Cleveland, Ohio, uses the mineral to produce high heat and low electric conductivity ceramic parts for lasers and other high-energy electronic devices.

The plant has attracted community opposition after 35 workers were contaminated and one died in the 1990s due to an error in federal handling standards, written in the 1940s by the Atomic Energy Commission.

Since then, the employee risk has been eliminated, but southside residents remained concerned. Contributing to their concern is the unrelated contamination of southside water wells with Trichloroethylene (TCE), which had been used as an aircraft solvent at nearby Tucson International Airport.

Appointed by the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Air Quality Hearing Board has been under state regulations defined by the Clean Air Act. Including a medical doctors, engineer and attorney, as well as two community representatives, “the board will be listing to both sides,” said Beth Gorman, PDEQ program manager.

“They can choose to uphold the permit or support the appellants or have us modify the permit,” she said. “It’s a long time since we’ve had a situation like this, so it’s hard to predict what will happen.”

Awaiting the decision, Brush General Manager John Scheatzle said there hasn’t been an appeal before the board since 1997. “How will this work? I don’t know.”

With work being done to increase thermal conductivity in the products and new machinery centers being installed, the facility is ready to move forward, if the county’s monitoring plan upheld, he said. Meanwhile, “We’re confident that the permit is very responsive to community concerns. Combined with the air monitoring at the schools, it shows that we continue to be doing more than what’s required. So we’re hopeful.”

Adding to that hopefulness was a Dec. 1 ADEQ open house at Sunnyside High School, during which community members expressed satisfaction with the permit requirements.

Scheatzle said most of those who showed up were members of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association. “They came in support of us,” he said, “all dressed in what they called ‘Brush Blue’.”

Officials in attendance at that meeting included representatives from the Pima County Health Department, Sunnyside School District, Tucson Fire Department, University of Arizona, Environment Protection Agency and PDEQ.

The sparse audience attendance may be an indication of satisfaction with the permit, noted school district spokeswoman Monique Soria.

“PDEQ sent out postcards and the district sent out flyers and the open house was even publicized in the newspaper, so people knew about it,” she said. “There used to be a larger turnout before the permitting process was completed, but people seem to feel they have been informed.”

Sunnyside School Board Memeber Eva Dong, a critic of the Brush plant, was satisfied, Soria said.

“She said she felt that this has been a process where she has been at a lot of meetings and asked a lot of questions about emissions and response to any incident. Now, she feels that, as a community, we’ve had the issues addressed,” Soria said.

In addition, Dong wanted to maintain an independent guarantee that the students and teachers in the Sunnyside schools, adjacent to the Brush plant, were safe, Soria said. “So the fact that Brush is now paying for the monitoring is a victory.”

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