TAKE ACTION: Demand Bakersfield Investigate Dreyer's Ice Cream
International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 501, which represents skilled maintenance workers at the Dreyer’s Bakersfield plant obtained a hazard assessment and off-site consequences analysis for ammonia process (available here), conducted for the production facility. The purpose of the hazard assessment was to evaluate the impact of significant releases of ammonia on public health and the environment.
The hazard assessment disclosed Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream Company operates two ammonia refrigeration systems for the production and storage of their products at its ice cream processing facility. Further, the hazard assessment of these refrigeration systems identified 114,437 people across private residences, commercial areas, schools, churches, and recreational areas within a 3.1-mile radius as being affected in a worst-case scenario ammonia leakage.
Join us in calling on the City of Bakersfield and Kern County to conduct an independent investigation into Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream to evaluate their infrastructural capacity to mitigate a worst-case scenario ammonia leakage at its Bakersfield facility and produce a public report on your findings!
For additional information about the health impacts of ammonia, please see the CDC Chemical Fact Sheet on Ammonia
