Kern County Supervisors Vow to Block McColl Plan

Responding to an outpouring of public opposition, the Kern County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to explore legal means to halt the transport of hazardous waste from Fullerton’s McColl dump to a disposal site near the rural community of Buttonwillow.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined that Petroleum Waste Inc., a disposal site six miles west of Buttonwillow, could accept and store an estimated 200,000 tons of McColl waste and contaminated soil.

Although they had won concessions from the state that the trucks would bypass the town’s main highway, Kern County supervisors Tuesday recommended that the smelly, World War II oil refinery sludge be encapsulated at the McColl dump instead.

“If it is so safe, let Fullerton keep it,” Supervisor Trice Harvey said.

“Kern County people feel their health is just as important as the people in Fullerton,” said Harvey, whose district includes the waste site and surrounding communities.

Officials for the state health department’s Toxic Substances Control division declined to comment on the impact of the board’s decision.

“We want to see the official resolution and correspondence be fore we will be able to respond officially,” said department spokeswoman Marcia Murphy in Sacramento.

The 2-year-old disposal site is on 320 acres off California 58, about 36 miles west of Bakersfield. It is a Class II-1 site with a federal permit to accept the kind of waste to be excavated from McColl.

Steven Viani, who oversees the $26.5-million Superfund cleanup project, said Tuesday that the disposal site in Kern County is far safer than McColl because of the precautions taken by the developer, the dry climate, more-compact soil conditions and a ground water table that is far deeper than that in Fullerton.

The McColl site was created in the mid-1940s when oil companies that produced aviation fuel for the war effort dumped refinery wastes in 12 sumps operated by Eli McColl in then-rural Fullerton. The state project manager for the McColl cleanup said the 1940s dumping of aviation fuel was haphazardly done and well behind what was then state-of-the-art.

The dump is situated under a vacant field and is part of a nine-hole golf course on the Los Coyotes Country Club. It is bordered on three sides by upper-middle-class homes.

State health officials, after years of testing in response to residents’ complaints, determined that the soil contains sulphuric acid, benzene and arsenic. Fumes coming from the dump site also contain sulphur dioxide, which causes residents in the area to complain of headaches, nausea and respiratory ailments.

Last year, the state Department of Health Services, which is overseeing the Superfund project for the Environmental Protection Agency, chose Canonie Engineers of Chesterton, Ind., to be the prime contractor to excavate McColl waste and contaminated soil, then transport it to an approved landfill.

Originally, the Casmalia Resources dump in Santa Barbara County was chosen to accept the McColl waste, but objections from residents led to a lawsuit to force the state to file a detailed environmental impact report on the project.

Simultaneously, the EPA decided in January that any dump site to receive the waste must have a double-lined vault and leak detection systems to guard against ground water contamination. Casmalia landfill operators, who had originally agreed to accept the waste for $30 a ton, raised their price to $140 a ton. Unable to reach agreement on a price, Canonie officials sought bids from three other disposal facilities, including Petroleum Waste Inc., which was accepted as the low bidder at $31.50 a ton.

Cites Possible Strategies

The selection of Petroleum Waste Inc. made the Santa Barbara County court challenge moot, according to project officials, but the threat of a lengthy court battle was renewed Tuesday by the Kern County board’s action.

Bakersfield lawyer Tom Fallgatter, who represents a group of Buttonwillow residents opposing both the McColl waste dumping and the existence of the licensed disposal site, said Tuesday that the county appears to have three options:

- The board could warn Petroleum Waste Inc. that an implied condition of their permit to operate the disposal site allows them to take only petroleum waste generated in Kern County.

- The board could challenge the state’s filing of a categorical exemption for the McColl transport by saying that while the cleanup project improves the environment in Fullerton, it has a potentially adverse impact on Kern County.

- The board could raise the same issue as Santa Barbara County did: that the California Superfund legislation requires a public hearing in any community where hazardous waste is to be brought.

Fallgatter said a large part of the public concern stems from lack of information provided about the McColl waste. He said residents also are concerned about the speed with which state officials are proceeding in the project. “There is a certain amount of feeling that this is being shoved down their throats,” Fallgatter said. The citizens’ group will probably wait a week or two to see what the supervisors do before taking any more action, he said.

Supervisor Harvey said he was angered by the attitude of state health officials, who, he said, provided little or no information unless directly asked in a public forum. “I’m tired of these jerks coming to Kern County and telling us nothing. They don’t even defend what they are doing.”

A representative of the state attorney general’s office told board members in the jammed public hearing room that federal and state regulations permit them to go ahead with the project without seeking local comment or filing environmental impact statements.

Mike Golden, McColl project manager for the state Deparment of Health Services, told supervisors that the state would haul no waste to the Kern County site before May 23 and would schedule a public forum for comment on the plan, according to Harvey.

“Maybe they (state officials) can overrun us, but we are going to do what we can to stop them,” Harvey said.

‘It Has to Go Somewhere’

Meanwhile, at the Fullerton project site, Canonie’s project manager for the cleanup, Tom Donovan, said Tuesday, “No one wants it in their backyard, but if we all want to live the quality life we do, it (hazardous waste) has to go somewhere.”

Donovan said the delays now approaching four months are costing the state $12,000 a day. He said that the site would be ready to begin excavation and removal of waste as early as May 15.

“We were supposed to be finished with the McColl cleanup project this month, according to our original schedule when we went to bid in December of 1983,” Donovan said.

He speculated that because this is a public project, it is getting more attention than many private cleanups of more hazardous wastes generated thoughout the state.

“Maybe the state or the EPA is going to have to say for once and for all this is the reality--we are traveling on state roads to a permitted site and we are going ahead with this project,” Donovan said.

In the McColl cleanup, Donovan said, “We’ve tried to develop as safe and comprehensive a program as possible. If they would just give us a chance to do our job. We feel we’ve planned it well.”

But with the specter of further delays raised by Kern County opposition, Donovan said, “You know, I was incredibly frustrated when I started this project four months ago. But I guess all we can do now is roll with the punches.”