Surely they've had to get new permits over time as their operations changed? And why didn't the presence of the plant prevent the town from growing around it?
There's a home 430 feet away from it. At that point you didn't even try to create a buffer zone.
Their operations have not changed very much. They have always made acrylic windshields for airplanes.
This area is zoned as an industrial park, which doesn't require buffer zones. Probably city planners at the time just thought of them as a windshield manufacturer and didn't realize the potential risks.
I can't link to it directly because Historic Aerials[1] hates direct links, but for those following along at home: The address of the leak seems to be 12122 Western Ave, Garden Grove, CA.
The leak itself seems to be centered around a round tank near a curve on a railroad, betwixt Lampson and Chapman avenues[2].
That plant and its tank, or a tank very similar similar to it, seems to have been built between between 1963 and 1972.
The houses near the tank were built prior to 1963. At that time when the houses were built nearby, the area where the plant is now located was undeveloped agricultural land.
Therefore, in this particular instance: It sure seems like they built the plant next to the neighborhood, instead of the people building houses next to the plant.
I'm reluctant to blame the homeowners, here -- at all. They were here first.
This attitude is why all our manufacturing moved to China.
Why is the factory's fault that people built houses right up to the edge of of the industrial site? Are you seriously suggesting they should have been shut down because people decided to build houses near an established industrial plant?
I think the parent comment is suggesting that residential units should not be allowed to be built around it, rather than that once someone builds a house around it the plant has to shut down.
"Surely they've had to get new permits over time as their operations changed"
I think your reading is very generous — this clearly implies that the factory should have had their operations at best frozen once the surrounding area was built out.
"As their operations changed" implying that perhaps the tanks weren't there when the houses were built.
Alternatively the tanks predate the houses in which case allowing housing so close to them seems highly questionable.
However given the long history of acrylic it's entirely possible that both the tanks and the housing predate modern safety practices in which case there's really not much to complain about. That possibility hadn't occurred to me when I first posted because I hadn't been aware of the history of the area.
Edit: And in the time it took me to write that someone else posted historic evidence that the houses were there before the plant. However it was the 1960s so safe bet that safety standards weren't what they are now.
There's a home 430 feet away from it. At that point you didn't even try to create a buffer zone.