On-Site Containment at McColl Feared : Fullerton Asks State for Assessment of Impact on Property Values

The City of Fullerton has asked state toxics officials to assess the potential impact on property values around the McColl hazardous waste dump if the acid refinery sludge were to be permanently entombed on site.

Containment on site is one of half a dozen possible cleanup methods under review by state toxics officials as part of a court-ordered environmental impact study.

Officials in Fullerton, which last week approved a $2.5-million settlement with 141 families who sued over the toxic dump’s impact on their health and property values, noted that entombing the sludge would make McColl a permanent hazardous waste site.

“It has been alleged that home sales in the McColl area have been significantly impaired, caused at least in part by a ‘redlining’ of this area by financial institutions due to the presence of the McColl site,” senior city planner Barry D. Eaton wrote in a letter sent to state toxics officials Monday.

Thorough Study Asked

Enclosing the sludge on site would have negative economic impacts and cause physical deterioration in surrounding neighborhoods, and that potential must be thoroughly studied before any cleanup method is chosen, Eaton said.

A Superior Court judge in Kern County last May ordered the state to do a full environmental impact study of the hazards in cleaning up the McColl dump. The action halted a $26.5-million Superfund project to excavate the site and relocate the sludge.

Fullerton’s letter was a response to the state’s second formal notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact report. The state Department of Health Services toxics substances control division sent out a second notice after Fullerton criticized the first as seriously flawed.

The second notice now lists cleanup methods to be studied --including on-site treatment, incineration on or off site, thermal processing, excavation and redisposal and encapsulation. But Eaton contended in his letter that many omissions remain and new ones appear in the revised document.

Eaton also renewed an appeal that the city be included in the study of cleanup methods. He formally requested that an inter-agency committee of affected agencies begin holding monthly meetings within 30 days.

State health officials have scheduled eight public meetings from Central to Southern California this month and next to seek comment on the proposed environmental review. The first meetings were held this week in Los Angeles and Santa Maria, near Casmalia Resources Inc., a potential disposal site for McColl waste. A third meeting was scheduled for today in Kettleman City, near another potential disposal site, Chemical Waste Management in Kettleman Hills.

Only one day of hearings is planned in Orange County, April 8. The public session is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Parks Junior High School in northwest Fullerton. A session with city and county health officials to discuss the scope of the environmental impact study will be held earlier the same day at the Hunt Branch Library in Fullerton.