WASTE: Environmentalists Gearing Up to Battle Dumping Bill : Environmentalists Gear Up to Battle Dumping Bill

A bill that would allow automobile shredding firms to annually dump 200,000 tons of a marginally hazardous waste into landfills intended for ordinary household garbage has been quietly moving through the Legislature with hardly a ripple of dissent.

But as the Legislation nears final approval, environmentalists and conservation groups are gearing for a last-minute effort to either kill it or enact it along with tough safeguards to protect against groundwater contamination by waste from shredding companies in San Diego, Los Angeles and Orange counties.

State and regional water quality boards, which initially feared the bill would limit their authority, have persuaded the author, Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) to make numerous changes that call for tight restrictions.

Even two Los Angeles County shredding firms, which have spent millions shipping their waste to an Indian reservation in Arizona, say they object to the bill because, as now written, it would let their competitors dispose of theirs cheaply.

So far, Bergeson’s bill has passed the Senate and three legislative committees without a single “nay” vote. But opposition is expected today when the measure is heard by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

Bergeson and others say the controversy, as well as the problem she is seeking to address in the bill, illustrates the multi-jurisdictional confusion that has prompted Gov. George Deukmejian to call for a single state department to deal with matters relating to toxic and hazardous materials.

No other state except California classifies shredder waste--which contains arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel and lead--as hazardous. For years, auto shredders were all dumping their wastes into landfills authorized to take only ordinary household garbage.

Since notifying the shredding companies last year that their wastes were regarded as hazardous, state health officials, using their administrative authority, have allowed them to use regular municipal landfill facilities. Officials say the slightly less than acceptable levels of the contaminant lead oxide in shredder waste would not seep into groundwater.

Northern California regional water officials relied on that finding. But in Southern California, water officials dispute the claim that the materials can be safely placed in landfills, and local elected officials--who fear the public would be outraged--have not allowed the dumping.

Shredders in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties have been forced to either ship their waste out of state at great expense, stockpile large quantities or dump it illegally.

As originally written, Bergeson’s bill would have done little more than change the definition of shredder wastes so they would be classified as non-hazardous. But last week, she won crucial Democratic backing in the Assembly Environmental Safety Committee by making numerous changes and agreeing to address all of the state Water Resources Control Board’s environmental safety concerns.

The amended version of Bergeson’s bill still would reclassify shredder wastes as non-hazardous but would nonetheless require the keeping of detailed handling and transportation records.

It would also require shredding firms to prove to state health officials that the waste poses no threat to the environment or to public health. Additionally, it would require health officials to enforce stringent disposal rules adopted by regional water quality authorities, which have insisted that shredder waste be segregated from other garbage and encased in impermeable clay.

Municipal waste officials now complain that the result is a measure that would call shredder waste something other than hazardous, but require that such wastes be handled as if they were hazardous. Under those circumstances, many say they still will not accept shredder wastes at facilities intended to keep ordinary household garbage.

For the most part, the troubles for the eight California firms that shred dismantled automobiles and large appliances to make recycled steel began in March, 1984. At that time, the state Department of Health Services begin enforcing a two-year-old regulation classifying the waste as hazardous.

Only local health officials in Los Angeles County had tried to enforce it before last year, when state health authorities wrote letters telling all eight California shredding firms the material had to be handled and disposed of under regulations governing hazardous waste.

Since last year, one firm, Hugo Neu Proler, located on Terminal Island, has been placed on the state “superfund” list of hazardous waste sites most in need of cleanup. The firm shut down its shredder temporarily and moved more than 30,000 tons of the waste to Arizona. The firm filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday demanding to be taken off the superfund list.