Complaint Filed Against Dump Managed by State GOP Official

A hazardous waste dump site in Kern County managed by the vice chairman of the California Republican Party has been found to be “grossly” violating federal law and may be fined as much as $307,000, officials of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed Tuesday.

Environmental Protection Corp., a Bakersfield firm whose president is William H. Park--named last February to the state Republican post--”has grossly violated federal law and regulation,” EPA regional administrator Judith E. Ayres said in a statement issued from the agency’s offices in San Francisco.

“We will not tolerate improper management of hazardous wastes in this facility,” she said.

EPA spokesman Al Zemsky said the violations at Environmental Protection Corp.’s 80-acre dump site, near the small community of Fellows in western Kern County, include failure to provide proper emergency equipment for employees, illegal mixing of incompatible waste materials and the absence of a ground water monitoring system.

Landowner Also Named

Also named in the EPA complaint and subject to some of the proposed $307,000 in fines is the owner of the land, Santa Fe Energy Co. of Santa Fe Springs.

Officials of Santa Fe Energy could not be reached for comment. However, Park said Tuesday that his company “will work with the EPA in resolving its legitimate concerns.” He added that his firm has “disposed of more than 22 million barrels of hazardous and non-hazardous waste in an environmentally safe manner” during its 14-year existence.

Zemsky said EPA inspectors also cited the dump for failure to provide complete contingency closure plans and handling hazardous wastes without providing methods to accurately identify the nature of the wastes.

He said the EPA complaint lists corrective action that must be taken, including the installation of additional emergency safety equipment, the submittal of amended emergency and closure plans and the expansion of procedures employed to identify incoming wastes.

The dump operators also will be required to conduct a study of the site’s ground water geology, install ground water monitoring wells and follow an accelerated schedule for ground water sampling and analysis.

Zemsky said the civil penalties proposed by the EPA staff can be decreased if Environmental Protection Corp. and Santa Fe Energy Co. agree to comply with the EPA’s requirements for corrective action. The two companies also have the option to appeal the staff’s findings to an EPA administrative law judge.

Referred to District Attorney

In addition, the civil complaint has been referred to the Kern County district attorney’s office for possible criminal proceedings. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said he could not comment pending the outcome of an investigation.

Park said that “the concerns expressed in the complaint refer to paper work and technical matters--not enough eye washes, not enough emergency showers and not enough plans prepared for EPA approval.”

Park said his company “submitted (to the EPA) more than 105 pounds of documents more than two years ago. We resolved a number of EPA concerns before the complaint was filed.”

“They’re not (legal) charges, they’re administrative complaints,” he added. “Practically everybody in the waste disposal site business has had either this kind of action taken against them or similar action now pending.”