Foes Ready Fight on Auto-Shredding Disposal 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 refuse has been quietly moving through the Legislature with hardly a ripple of dissent.

But as the legislation nears final approval, conservation groups are gearing up for a last-minute effort to either kill it or amend it with enough safeguards to protect against ground water contamination.

State and regional water quality boards, likewise concerned about ground water and worried that the bill would limit their authority, have persuaded the author, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), to make numerous changes that call for tight restrictions.

Some objections have even come from several of the state’s eight shredding companies who think competing companies would benefit more than their own from the bill.

So far, Bergeson’s bill has passed three committees and the full Senate 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.

For more than a year, state health officials, using their administrative authority, have been willing to allow auto shredders to use regular municipal landfill facilities to dispose of the waste, most of it in the form of fine metal dust known as “fluff.”

They say the slightly-less-than-acceptable levels of the contaminant lead oxide in the waste would not seep into ground water.

Regional water officials in Northern California, relying on that finding, have permitted the dumping at local Class III dumps--those authorized to accept only ordinary household solid refuse. But Southern California water officials have disputed the conclusion that the materials can be safely placed in landfills, and local elected officials--fearing a public outcry--have not allowed the dumping.

Shredding companies in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties have been forced to 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 require shredding firms to prove to state health officials that the waste poses no threat to the environment or to public health. And it would require health officials to enforce stringent disposal rules adopted by regional water quality authorities, under which the shredder waste can go to Class III dumps only if it is segregated from other garbage and encased in impermeable clay.

Now, municipal waste officials complain that what has resulted is a measure that would call shredder wastes something other than hazardous but require that they be handled as if they were hazardous. Under those circumstances, many say they still will not accept shredder waste at Class III facilities.

For the most part, the troubles for the eight California companies 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 2-year-old regulation classifying the waste as hazardous.

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

Fund on Superfund List

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

Several other firms in Southern California, including Anaheim-based Orange County Steel Salvage, are under investigation for alleged illegal storage or dumping violations, according to Angelo Bellomo, a regional health services official in Los Angeles.

Under current regulations, hazardous materials must be disposed of at Class I and certain Class II sites, both of which have special protections against leaking and seepage. Detailed logs and records regarding handling and transportation of the materials are also required.

Unique to State

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 Class III landfills.

Some shredders continued those disposal practices after being notified by state officials last year that their wastes were regarded as hazardous.

“Nobody ever stopped until the dumps cut them off,” said George Adams Jr., owner of Orange County Steel Salvage.