Cleanup Meanders Through Paper Maze as Toxins Stew in Escondido

W.F. Bradley Jr. lives next door to San Diego County’s most notorious toxic waste dump, and when it rains heavily, runoff from the despoiled property runs across his backyard.

But Bradley, who for 17 years was a trustee of the local high school district, shows no concern.

“I’ll die of skin cancer first,” he says. “I love the sunshine.”

For 3 1/2 years he has watched chemists and health specialists from county, state and federal agencies tromp across the six-acre parcel, known as the Chatham Brothers site, taking samples of this and that and holding measuring gizmos and probes that make clicking sounds when they’re near something bad.

It amuses him, he says. “Once I thought about walking over there and, in my best Okie accent, telling them that on hot summer days, that ol’ pond kind of glows.” He laughs at the thought of their reaction.

Most people don’t share Bradley’s relaxed attitude toward the waste dump.

Since it was first declared hazardous in December, 1981, officials have been trying to clean up the property, which is in the 2200 block of Bernardo Avenue in the rural southwestern part of town.

Despite visits to the site by the lieutenant governor, breast-beating by county supervisors, outcries by some residents of the neighborhood and unceasing coverage in local newspapers and television newscasts, state health officials say the property will not be cleaned up before next year--at the earliest.

The story of why the state has not gotten around to cleaning up the site is a cynic’s delight, showing how an unspectacular toxic dump such as this one can fall victim to attorneys’ maneuverings, debates about property ownership and liability, legislators’ whims, financial shortcomings, and changes in government enforcement strategies.

Indeed, no one yet knows just how dangerous the Chatham site is, even though it has been 3 1/2 years since state health officials declared it a hazardous waste site. While deteriorating barrels of chemical residue litter the property, toxic material is strewn on the ground and a water well on the site is filled with chemical garbage, there has been no excavation to determine what kind of stuff is buried beneath the surface, and no real testing to determine whether the underground water table--which feeds nearby Lake Hodges--is being polluted by chemicals from the site.

It is OK to breathe the air at ground level--not much different from putting your nose a few inches above freeway pavement, said Larry Aker, who heads the county Department of Health Services’ hazardous materials program.

A person can walk through much of the site without fear, but a fence was erected nonetheless--just to play it safe.

“But what’s underneath the surface is still a mystery to us,” Aker said.

The site is on 32 acres once owned by brothers Thomas and Robert Chatham, each of whom still lives near the property. The brothers operated a chemical distilling and reclamation operation for about 35 years, following their father’s footsteps.

The brothers purchased barrels of used chemicals--typically cleaning solvents and waste oil--for $2 or $3 each, and cleansed the chemicals for reuse by distilling them in a curious contraption that looked a little like a small rocket ship, health officials say. The reclaimed chemicals would then be resold to manufacturers and other users, and the unusable stuff would be dumped.

Furthermore, the Chathams stored oil drums and operated a hazardous waste transportation company during some of the 30-plus years they operated their chemical recycling firm, through the late 1970s.

It is not clear to state and county health officials how much of the worthless chemicals was transported to landfills and how much may have remained on the six-acre site. Officials inventoried 380 barrels that were on the site in 1982; they detected what appear to be settling ponds where the ground is soft but nothing grows, and at least two or three small pits are filled three feet deep with a gooey black material.

Other tests have detected metal readings below the surface, but it is not known whether they are barrels or perhaps a junked car body.

“Evidence exists, however, which indicates that significant quantities of hazardous waste may have been disposed of underground,” according to a county report on the Chatham site issued in January.

The state has a complicated procedure to clean up toxic sites and the Chatham property is only part of the way through that maze.

How quickly a site is cleaned up depends on any number of factors, including its ranking on the state’s so-called Superfund list, which establishes a pecking order of which sites should be cleaned up the soonest. Just how far down the list the state gets depends on how much Superfund money there is.

Until this year, the state Superfund cleanup budget was about $10 million annually. But health officials admit that cleaning up just one or two so-called “monster sites” could wipe out an entire year’s budget. The average cost of a toxic site cleanup is $7.2 million, officials say.

The Chatham site is expected to cost $2.3 million to clean up, according to some very preliminary estimates.

Until this year, the Superfund rankings reflected the potential risk of a particular site to public health and the environment, as measured by its potential for fire and explosion, direct public contact with the toxins, and whether the toxins were infiltrating the groundwater or polluting the air.

Based on those criteria, the Chatham site was ranked in 1983 as the 16th most dangerous toxic waste site in California. Officials said they were particularly concerned about groundwater contamination and the fact that neighborhood children were lured to the open site by the presence of a pond full of fish and frogs. The federal Environmental Protection Agency sent crews in to inspect the site, but decided it was not an emergency and thus not eligible for federal Superfund cleanup money.

By the end of 1984, as more sites were added to the list and the risks of existing sites were evaluated and reevaluated, the site had dropped to No. 49 on the state list.

The state Superfund list was redefined this year, partly in conjunction with the passage in November of Proposition 27, the $100-million Hazardous Substance Cleanup Bond Act.

Now the rankings reflect not only the potential danger to the public and the environment, but also a “cost-benefit” component in which officials can plug into the ratings equation the question of how much it would cost to clean up the site and the number of people who would benefit from the cleanup. With the new ratings system, some smaller sites were put near the top of the list while some of the state’s worst sites, such as the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Riverside and the McColl toxic waste dump in Fullerton--which qualify for federal cleanup aid--were put far down on the state priority list for attention.

On that new Superfund list, which was expanded to include about twice as many sites as before, the Chatham site dropped from No. 49 in 1984 to No. 67 in January of this year. In February it dropped further, to No. 77.

That same month, Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy visited the site and declared it “the most threatening site in San Diego County” because of uncertainty over whether the contaminants in the ground might pollute the water table.

The very next month, the site jumped to No. 29. Joel Moskowitz, who resigned in June as head of the state’s toxic waste cleanup program, said the ratings jump had nothing to do with McCarthy’s visit. “He visited a lot of sites around the state and said the same thing everywhere he went,” Moskowitz said. In fact, several site rankings dropped in the wake of McCarthy’s visits to them.

The Chatham ranking rose because of heightened concern that the contaminants might seep into the groundwater, Moskowitz said.

In any event, the site has since slipped in the rankings. In April, it was ranked No. 35; in May, 36; in June, 40, and in July, 43.

Escondido city officials and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors have passed resolutions calling for state action on the site; on July 24, Supervisor Paul Eckert wrote McCarthy a letter asking for his intervention in winning state action.

If there is frustration with the state and with the lack of action on the Chatham site, no wonder.

Anticipation of a cleanup has become a roller-coaster affair. In August of 1983, for instance, the IT Corp. of San Diego, a hazardous materials disposal company, was hired by the Chathams to help clean up the site and was mapping a detailed disposal plan for state approval.

But nothing came of the plan, and in October, 1983, state officials said they would consider filing either civil or criminal charges against the Chathams. No charges have been filed.

About that same time, the Escondido city attorney’s office threatened to take Robert Chatham to court because he continued to operate a small chemical recycling operation behind his home on Gamble Lane, just up the street from the larger toxic site.

Under protest, Chatham cleaned up his backyard, removing chemical barrels and ending the recycling operation, but still no action was taken on the larger site.

In January, 1984, Angelo Bellomo, the Southern California regional head of the state’s toxic cleanup program, again promised to get tough with the Chathams. “Until now, the state’s involvement has not been as aggressive as it should be,” he said at the time. “We’re trying to put this (Chatham site) on the front burner. God knows this has been allowed to fester too long and our department, for one, hasn’t been giving it the attention it requires. But that perspective is now changing. This site has gone on (without action) long enough.”

Indeed, in the weeks following Bellomo’s get-tough pledge, officials met with the Chathams’ attorney to plan the site cleanup.

But the discussions got bogged down in a debate over who would pay for the work, since no state money had been allocated to pay for it.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the Chathams sold the 32-acre parcel, including the toxic site, for $1.5 million in late 1980 to Coastal Equities, a real estate investment firm that said it would develop the property for new homes.

The sales agreement called for Coastal Equities to pay $420,000 in cash to the Chathams, and then to pay 12% interest semiannually on the balance for five years, when a balloon payment on the $1,080,000 balance would come due.

Coastal Equities missed the first interest payment in mid-1981, according to David Mullikin, the Chathams’ attorney, and the brothers moved to foreclose on the property. The courts temporarily halted the foreclosure, then allowed it to go forward. But then, virtually on the eve of a courthouse-steps auction, Coastal Equities moved into involuntary bankruptcy because of more serious troubles: The company’s five top officials, who got 2,500 people to invest $50 million with the promise of double-digit annual returns, would later be convicted of fraud for operating a Ponzi scheme, using new investors’ money to pay off old investors.

Since late 1981, then, the property has been tied up in bankruptcy court.

The state Department of Health Services has since been negotiating with both the Chathams and the court-appointed trustee of Coastal Equities to share in the cost of the cleanup.

Coastal Equities has denied any liability for the toxic mess, saying it had nothing to do with it and shouldn’t be expected to help pay for it, especially since it would come at the expense of the elderly investors who were swindled in by the company and can’t stand to lose any more money.

Yet, as a toxic site, the property is not much of an asset to Coastal Equities, confounding the efforts of the trustee, M. James Lorenz, to work the company through its bankruptcy. Lorenz said the company did not make its first payment to the Chathams because the brothers failed to clean up the chemicals as they had promised in the escrow instructions.

“We’re not liable (for the cleanup costs) because we didn’t cause (the toxic waste),” said Keith McWilliams, attorney for the Coastal Equities’ estate.

Mullikin, the Chathams’ attorney, says Coastal Equities’ unwillingness to bend is further confounding the problem.

One option, Mullikin said, is for Coastal Equities to at least pay the Chathams about $500,000 in overdue interest payments on the property--money that could be earmarked to help finance the cleanup. But Coastal Equities won’t forward the money, he said.

Another possibility, Mullikin said, would be to allow the state to become the primary lien-holder on the property, as assurance that it would eventually be repaid for cleanup costs once the property is sold. For now that issue is moot because the state has no money of its own with which to initiate the cleanup. The Legislature has yet to appropriate the $100 million authorized by voters last November.

“Coastal Equities has the land, and we don’t have any real hard asset to use as collateral for a loan from a bank so we can help undertake a cleanup of the property,” Mullikin said.

“The Chathams can’t otherwise afford to clean it up, and Coastal Equities is unwilling to fund any of the effort, so that leaves the focus of our attention on the state (toxic cleanup) bond money.”

How much are the Chathams eventually willing to pay to help clean up the site?

The brothers have not legally accepted any responsibility for the problem, Mullikin notes. And their share of the cost of clean-up will be negotiated after the scope and cost are determined, he said.

“The process of apportioning liability is, quite frankly, the last chapter in these kinds of things,” he said. “We haven’t gotten to that point, yet.”

For their part, the two brothers are reluctant to discuss the matter publicly.

“I don’t want my name, or my brother’s name, in any more stories,” Thomas Chatham said last week. “Go talk to Coastal Equities. They’re the ones who own it. I’ve taken a hell of a lot of harassment. My name has been drug through the mud too . . . much.”

Robert Chatham refused to talk to a reporter.

Meanwhile, the state is again trumpeting a get-tough message. Bill Marlin, a staff attorney for the Department of Health Services in Sacramento, said an administrative order is being prepared that will require both Coastal Equities and the Chathams to clean up the property. If they don’t, they could be taken to court and fined $25,000 a day, or the state could clean up the property and then charge both parties triple the cost of the cleanup.

“We have been negotiating with them (Coastal Equities) on resolving this,” Marlin said. “They are willing to make some sort of deal, just so they can close the bankruptcy proceedings.”

But he said he is less patient with the Chathams. “They have slipped on all the time schedules, and we’re at the point of thinking about further action.”

Mullikin suggests that the state officials may be posturing in the face of mounting political pressure to have the site cleaned, even though they know the Chathams do not have the money to do it.

“It is duplicitous for the Department of Health Services to try to escalate this into an adversarial problem while, at the same time, it can’t get the Legislature to appropriate the bond money,” Mullikin said of the threatened court action.

The bill to appropriate the $100 million has been approved by the Assembly but awaits hearings in the Senate. Muddying the appropriation is the fact that individual legislators have authored their own separate bills to appropriate money for specific toxic site cleanups. “Virtually every member has a toxic site in his district, and they’ve all got their own bills for money for their own toxic sites. I’m having to track 170 separate toxic cleanup bills,” said Jennifer Tachera, the legislative coordinator for the Department of Health Services.

There are, however, no separate funding bills for the Chatham site.

But state officials say they are confident that once the $100 million is appropriated by the state, the Chatham site will receive immediate attention.

“The Chatham site is still high enough in the ranking that it will fall within the scope of this year’s expenditure plan,” said Tom Bailey, director of the state’s Superfund program.

First on the agenda--and already authorized because of some money on hand--will be an “endangerment assessment” which will review all of the site studies to date.

That study is needed to justify the expenditure of additional money, and may well cause the Chathams site to rise on the Superfund ranking, putting it in a better position to capture some of the $100 million bond money.

Next, a “site characterization” will be ordered. It is an on-site study to define, once and for all, what toxins are on the site and to what extent they have contaminated the ground and/or the groundwater. Based on those findings, alternative solutions will be posed and the most cost-effective one will be selected, Bailey said.

At the earliest, cleanup could begin sometime next year.

With the assumed availability of the $100 million in cleanup money, the state will no longer put off cleanup for the sake of debating who should pay for it, said Angelo Bellomo, who heads the Southern California toxic waste cleanup program for the state.

“We’ll worry about cost recovery actions at a later date,” he said. “We will notify the responsible parties of their obligations and if they fail to respond, we’ll clean up the site and file (action) on them later to recover the costs. That’s quicker than going to court to force action and then having to wait years.”

The cleanup can’t come too soon for some people in the neighborhood, like Linda Partridge, who lives about two blocks from the site but thinks she may be getting ill because of the toxic effects.

She said that, when the county conducted a cursory health survey of neighbors several years ago to determine if anyone had gotten sick because of their proximity to the Chatham site, the surveyors did not go to her street.

“When I called to complain, they said there were no other reports of anyone being sick,” said Partridge, who is a nurse.

She said that when she moved to the neighborhood in 1976, she began suffering from inflamed eyes and lungs and experienced fatigue, difficult breathing and “metallic tastes.” Her daughter also experienced breathing difficulties while living at home, she said, problems that went away when her daughter left the area.

“Then, one day, I heard on the radio about the toxic site,” she said. “I had no idea it was there, but then I said, ‘Oh my God, no wonder I’ve been feeling this way.’ ”

Since then, Partridge has rallied other area residents into a group called “Escondido Neighbors Against Chemical Toxins,” and has persuaded the county Department of Health Services to conduct a more extensive health survey in the neighborhood.

Other people have moved into property immediately adjacent to the toxic site knowing full well that it was there.

Harold Gracen, a recruiter for the Navy who is nearing retirement, rented a home on Gamble Lane that is literally a stone’s throw from the toxic site. “It was represented to me by the (property manager) as being there, but that it wasn’t dangerous,” Gracen said. “Nobody around here seems particularly upset by it. If there’s any danger of the chemicals getting into the water, though, the government should do something about it.”

Dale Hatter and his wife, Evelyn, have lived on Bernardo Avenue, across the street from the toxic site, for 21 years, and their daughter and son grew up in the neighborhood, spending days playing on the Chatham property.

“If they bulldozed the land flat and put a house over there, I’d live in it,” he proclaimed. “I feel bad for the Chathams. They’re getting the shaft. He didn’t do anything worse than any other business in America.”