Removal of tainted soil begins

Employing a large mechanical hoe, workers Thursday began digging up radioactive soil along a stretch of Ormond Beach wetlands in Oxnard.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the weeklong effort to remove 5,000 cubic yards of soil tainted with the metal thorium, generated by a shuttered metal recycling plant nearby.

Prolonged exposure to the metal or inhalation of thorium dust can increase the risk of bone, lung or pancreatic cancer.

About an acre of the 500-acre wetlands is affected.

Robert Wise, on-site coordinator for the EPA’s regional emergency response section, said federal contractors would dig out the polluted areas and ensure that any soil left behind is below acceptable radiation levels.

The contaminated soil is being loaded onto dump trucks and transported back to the former Halaco Engineering Co. smelting plant, which operated on adjacent beachfront property from 1965 until it was shut down in late 2004 after the company filed for bankruptcy.

As a precaution, public access to the wetlands at the south end of Perkins Road is blocked until the cleanup is complete. The EPA also closed a public parking lot overseeing the Ormond Beach Lagoon and fenced off a footbridge that connects the road to a portion of the wetlands.

Wise said the public areas would be reopened next week once scientists are confident the health threat is contained. He said the affected areas are not easily reached by beach visitors.

The EPA, which assumed oversight of the property last year, recently began a multimillion-dollar effort to stabilize and reshape towering piles of waste -- higher than 41 feet in some places -- on the plant site to make them less susceptible to erosion and to keep them from sloughing into the wetlands. The wetlands are home to numerous species, including least tern and snowy plover birds.

After the work is completed next month, Wise said he intends to place a 6-foot-high, barbed-wire fence around the slag pile, which contains more than 710,000 cubic yards of spent waste, enough hazardous material to fill more than 1,000 standard-size homes.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has written to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson demanding a report on the agency’s progress and details on its long-term plans to clean up the prospective Superfund site.

“EPA must immediately determine the extent of the threat and do everything possible to clean it up,” Boxer said in the March 8 letter. “All additional measures possible to protect the health of local citizens must be taken immediately.”

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greg.griggs@latimes.com