Toxic Cleanup Slow, Still Seen as Improvement

California’s toxic waste cleanup efforts, marked by years of bungling and criticism, are moving forward at a glacial pace, but even critics have detected flecks of promise.

It takes the state Department of Health Services an average of more than five years just to identify a major hazardous waste site and figure out what to do with it, another two years to clean it up, and two more months to certify on paper that it’s no longer a potential danger to health or the environment.

That’s according to the department’s own spending plan for the cleanup of 198 contaminated sites with $147 million in bond funds.

Even though polls show that toxics are top in the minds of Californians, and politicians of every stripe are pledging to help return the chemically contaminated environment to its once-pristine state, the two-inch thick document reveals that the problem isn’t close to being solved.

The 198 sites on the state’s cleanup list are just a fraction of the estimated 6,400 abandoned hazardous waste sites in California, yet the department expects only four to be cleaned up by next January. By July, 1987, a total of 13 sites are slated for cleanup, and many on the list won’t be taken care of until 1990.

‘Unprecedented Undertaking’

When the cleanup plan was released last month--four months after it was required by law to be delivered to the Legislature--Gov. George Deukmejian hailed it as “an unprecedented undertaking and commitment on the part of the state of California.”

After years of bureaucratic bungling in the department’s toxics division--noted in stinging reports by the state auditor general, the Little Hoover Commission, at legislative hearings and in state task force reports--the division has put together a plan that even critics acknowledge is an improvement.

“It’s not bad, and much better than previous years,” said Assemblyman Lloyd Connelly, a Sacramento Democrat who has been an outspoken critic of the state’s management of toxic wastes.

Still, Connelly said, the fact that it takes years to get from identifying a hazardous waste problem to actually cleaning it up is “outrageous. It’s just ridiculous. It’s absolutely insane.”

Management difficulties, lack of state expertise in toxic cleanup efforts and difficulties with clean-up contractors have been blamed in various reports reviewing the toxics problem. Only recently, bipartisan acknowledgement of the enormity of the problem of toxic waste has led to more cooperative efforts to solve it.

The state’s cleanup plan reveals just how extensive the problem is, and how slow the current mechanisms are for handling it.

Unlikely Toxic Areas

In addition to such notoriously hazardous waste sites as Stringfellow in Riverside County, and such expected areas of contamination as the Atlas Asbestos Mine in Fresno or John Smith Road Disposal in San Benito, the list shows chemical contamination dots the state in seemingly unlikely locales.

For example:

- In rural Tulare County, health officials in June, 1984, received complaints of taste and odor problems from residents adjacent to the Village Market. Groundwater samples were tested and revealed unsafe levels of highly toxic benzene, toluene, xylene and lead. County officials found at least two individual supply wells had been contaminated.

Officials discovered that at least 18,000 gallons of gasoline had leaked from the Village Market’s underground storage tank, creating a threat to groundwater and an explosion hazard. It took nearly a year to discover the problem and for the state Water Quality Control Board to order it cleaned up. It will take until May, 1988, for the state to complete a feasibility study of the cleanup, and another year to clean it up.

- At the Wasco Airport in Kern County, pesticide rinse waters from aerial spraying operations were draining into an unlined pond and contaminating soil. The regional water board ordered the airport to clean up the contamination in June, 1979. There is a residential area less than a quarter mile away, and potential contamination of the groundwater used by the town of Wasco for drinking and irrigation. So far, only a preliminary assessment of the site has been made. It is expected to take until October, 1988, to certify the area as clean.

- At the Clorox Co. in Oakland, groundwater sampling in late 1981 showed a “significant” concentration of mercury, which is highly toxic and attacks the gastrointestinal, respiratory and central nervous systems. Contaminated groundwater eventually discharges to Alameda Estuary, which leads to San Francisco Bay. A firm contracted by Clorox has completed planning for the cleanup, but the area is not expected to be certified as decontaminated until June of 1987.

Despite the magnitude of the problem, Assemblywoman Sally Tanner (D-El Monte), chairwoman of the Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, said she is “encouraged” that the state is beginning to clean up toxic waste sites.

Once new waste treatment technologies are developed, and more people are trained in the fields of toxic waste identification and cleanup, she said, it will take less time to complete the task.