6 County Disposal Sites Face Hazardous Waste Testing

The state Water Resources Control Board Thursday designated 150 dumps and landfills, including six in Orange County, for testing to determine whether they are leaking hazardous wastes.

They are among more than 1,800 solid waste sites that haven’t been included on earlier lists of hazardous waste sites. Legislation enacted last year requires the board to rank the 1,800 sites statewide, according to potential hazards, and then requires surveys at the rate of 150 per year.

Solid waste sites do not accept hazardous wastes, but there is concern over screening procedures, illegal dumping and disposal of toxic household wastes, such as paint thinner and some cleaners, a board spokesman said.

“I want to emphasize that placement on this list does not mean the site leaks or has a problem,” board Chairman Raymond Stone said, adding:

“It merely ranks the sites in priority for potential problems. Many of the reasons for putting a site high on the list have little to do with how the site is operated.”

The six sites in Orange County that will be tested are the Armed Forces Reserve Center in Los Alamitos, the Huntington Beach Lease “A” site, Santiago Canyon landfill, Coyote Canyon landfill, the McColl dump in Fullerton and the Prima Deschecha landfill.

An official of the Orange County Hazardous Waste Management Program said the office had not received word of the order and did not know when the testing would start.

Stone said some sites were ranked high because they are in industrial areas and near highway networks where illegal dumping would have been relatively easy. Other sites were ranked high because they were close to usable ground water, he said.

“The testing will tell us if we have a problem or not,” Stone said. “Until those results are in, it would be unfair to stigmatize the site as dangerous or unsafe.”

He said the testing will “either detect problems or help us reassure the public that the site in question is safe.”

Owners of the sites will be required next year to check for leakage and submit reports on the types of wastes that have accumulated. The board’s staff would be authorized to order more extensive tests and monitoring if it appears that there are problems at a site, such as contamination of ground water.

The 150 sites selected for testing next year headed the list of 1,800.

They included the City of Sacramento’s main garbage dump, the City of Fresno’s landfill, Casmalia Resources Site in Santa Barbara County, and two dumps owned by Environmental Protection Corp. in Bakersfield.