THE ACID PITS

In 1955, Robert Fox, a geologist employed by the State of California, selected the box canyon in the Jurupa Mountains in western Riverside County as an industrial liquid waste dump. The owner of the canyon, James Stringfellow, allowed a piece of his property in the canyon to become the disposal site. In September of 1955, the Riverside County Planning Commission approved the site and by August of 1956, the disposal of liquid toxic waste began. The chemicals were discharged into surface “evaporation ponds”—a series of pits, ponds, and lagoons constructed of decomposed granite. Over seventeen years about 34 million gallons of hazardous waste was deposited. Most manifests (cargo lists) for the chemicals dumped at Stringfellow used the description “acid wastes,” prompting the site’s nickname, “The Acid Pits.”