Toxic Cleanup Program Outlined : Governor Submits Plan to Spend $100 Million on 180 Sites

The Deukmejian Administration on Friday sent the Legislature a detailed strategy for cleaning up the state’s worst toxic waste sites.

The plan almost doubles the number of cleanup sites to 180, and will be funded by the $100 million in bonds approved by the voters last November. Gov. George Deukmejian has said he plans to ask the Legislature to appropriate all of the $100 million this year.

“It’s high time we started cleaning up sites in California,” Deputy Health Services Director Joel S. Moskowitz said at a press conference in which the cleanup plan was unveiled. “We want to do that, and we want to do that now.”

Moskowitz repeated a pledge Deukmejian made to the Legislature earlier this week that “a minimum” of 10 toxic waste sites would be cleaned up before year’s end.

The plan, which includes a new system for setting cleanup priorities, makes “significant” changes in rankings of waste sites, largely due to a new law that requires the money be spent where it is most likely to have the greatest health benefit for the dollar.

In addition, sites which are already on the federal “Superfund” list to clean up toxic wastes, or those in which the owners are taking action to clean up their properties, were given a lower ranking.

Thus sites such as the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Riverside County, Operating Industries in Los Angeles, and the McColl toxic waste dump in Fullerton--all three of which are on the federal Superfund list--plummeted on the state list.

Stringfellow Demoted Stringfellow, which was ranked second on the state list last year, is now ranked 81st. Operating Industries went to 74th from 16th. McColl went from 15th to 77th.

Moskowitz said the practical effect of the new ranking plan is to concentrate the state’s most immediate efforts on smaller, urban sites.

He emphasized that the new ranking system would not change the requirement that California contribute 10% of the costs of federal Superfund projects.

Three Los Angeles sites are included in the top 10 listed for cleanup this year. They are Dean & Associates, at 700 S. Santa Fe Ave.; the Southern Pacific Railroad & Transportation Co., near Strohm and Chandler avenues in North Hollywood, and Lyle Van Patten Paints, at 321 West 135th St.

Old transformers containing highly toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were stored at Dean & Associates. The soil there is contaminated, and cleanup is expected to cost $265,000.

Paint resins, toxic metals and flammable or toxic organic solvents were spilled at Lyle Van Patten Paints. Cleanup costs are pegged there at $940,000.

Cleanup of the Southern Pacific Railroad site is expected to cost the state only $20,000 in monitoring costs since the railroad is paying to clean the site, which is ranked ninth on the state Superfund list.