Legislator Responds to Kern County’s Threat to Sue : State Agency Challenged to Begin McColl Job

Angered at the prospect of Kern County opposition further delaying cleanup of Fullerton’s McColl hazardous waste dump, Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Fullerton) on Wednesday challenged the state Department of Health Services to begin removing the smelly World War II refinery sludge this week.

“We simply can’t have the state paralyzed into inaction because somebody is discussing the possibility of filing a lawsuit,” Johnson said in a prepared statement released Wednesday in Sacramento.

Three Kern County legislators have asked state health officials to conduct a full environmental impact review of the plan to haul 200,000 tons of McColl waste to Petroleum Waste Inc., an approved disposal facility about 36 miles west of Bakersfield near the rural farm community of Buttonwillow.

As a backstop, should political pressure fail, Kern County supervisors have ordered their attorneys to prepare to file a lawsuit within two weeks to stop the hauling of McColl waste to the facility.

Order by Board

Supervisor Trice Harvey said Wednesday that the board has directed Kern County Counsel Ralph Jordan to prepare legal documents to be filed by May 14 unless the state Department of Health Services agrees to do a full environmental review of the plan.

“We can be ready earlier if we find we can’t trust people, if we find those trucks are moving,” Harvey said in Bakersfield Wednesday.

Trucks are scheduled to roll from the Fullerton site on May 24, one day after the deadline to file legal action against the Superfund cleanup project, estimated to cost $26.5 million, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Services said Wednesday.

Spokesman Bob Borzelleri added that if the county files suit before May 23, the state Health Services Department could decide to advance the starting date.

In the meantime, state health officials will hold a public forum May 15 at Buttonwillow School to discuss McColl disposal plans and precautions with the 1,200 community residents, Borzelleri said.

Petroleum Waste Inc. is a two-year-old federally permitted Class II-1 disposal facility. It already receives petroleum waste products similar to the kind to be excavated from McColl.

Residents Skeptical

Buttonwillow residents--many of whom have just learned of the existence of Petroleum Waste Inc. --are not convinced that its triple-lined underground vaults can safely store the waste, nor do they want 40 trucks a day carrying McColl waste on local highways for the next 14 months.

Responding to mounting local opposition, state Sen. Walter W. Stiern (D-Bakersfield) and Assemblymen Don Rogers (R-Bakersfield) and Phil D. Wyman (R-Tehachapi) have asked the Department of Health Services to reconsider and conduct a full review of the environmental impact on Kern County.

“We have a lot of unanswered questions, and I think they deserve airing before any waste is deposited there,” Wyman said Wednesday.

Johnson argued that no further environmental impact reviews are necessary for cleanup of the dump site, now covered in part by a nine-hole golf course and bordered on three sides by upper-middle-class homes.

“The state has spent several million dollars over the last five years studying the site and its contents,” Johnson said.

“Requiring an EIR (environmental impact review) now would be like ordering an EIR for the construction of an airport, and then mandating an additional EIR every time an airplane takes off or lands,” he said.

Delays now approaching four months are costing the state $12,000 a day, according to Tom Donovan, McColl project manager for Canonie Engineering Inc. of Chesterton, Ind., the firm under contract to clean up the dump.