Program Reels Under Inquiries : Toxics Issue Still Plagues Governor After 4 Years

Within months of taking office, Gov. George Deukmejian declared that he was going to be tough on toxic polluters.

In a surprisingly forceful speech to the California Manufacturers Assn.--an audience that might have hoped for relaxation of some regulations--he served notice that the improper disposal of hazardous waste was “the No. 1 environmental problem facing our state” and that environmental laws would be “enforced to the letter.”

But as the end of Deukmejian’s four-year term approaches and as he runs for reelection, the Administration’s toxics program is still reeling from a series of critical audits and investigations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI and the state auditor general.

Issue in Campaign

And Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, the Republican governor’s Democratic opponent in the Nov. 4 election, has made the Administration’s toxics record one of the central issues in his underdog campaign.

While reviewing Deukmejian’s toxics record, The Times found these signs of turmoil within the state’s hazardous waste cleanup and enforcement programs:

- All six privately run dumps that are licensed by the Deukmejian Administration to accept the most toxic chemicals are leaking or fail to meet all federal rules for safe disposal. As a result, the EPA refuses to allow waste from federally financed cleanup sites in California to be hauled to any of them.

- A key U.S. environmental official early this year contended that the state toxics bureaucracy was “paralyzed” and recommended that California be stripped of its responsibility for cleanup of the Stringfellow Acid Pits near Riverside, the state’s most notorious dump site. Only after the Administration agreed to reforms and increased staffing did the EPA allow the state to retain control.

- Not one of the more than 200 dump sites on the state’s priority cleanup list has been decontaminated and removed from the list since November, 1984.

Top Deukmejian officials defend the Administration’s record. They argue that they are building an efficient cleanup and enforcement program out of the rubble that they found when they inherited the job from Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

They insist that the performance under Deukmejian has been good and is getting better under a new management team brought in by the Department of Health Services in March to run its toxics division.

“I think that we inherited from the former Administration a program that was in chaos,” said Deukmejian’s chief of staff, Steven A. Merksamer. “From day one, the program was strengthened and has been strengthened almost every day since.”

Increase in Funds

Money for cleanup and enforcement has increased nearly 1 1/2 times since 1982-83 to $144 million this year, Merksamer said. The added funds have allowed the Department of Health Services and other agencies dealing with toxics to increase staff working on the problem by 48%--to 1,386 positions.

The new managers argue that many of the difficulties they are grappling with are simply the inevitable problems of a large bureaucracy that was quickly assembled to enforce laws and supervise cleanup.

“It’s almost like trying to build a railroad, lay the track and run the train down it at the same time,” said Alex R. Cunningham, chief deputy health services director in charge of toxics.

EPA’s regional administrator, Judith E. Ayres, is sympathetic to that position, even though her agency has been highly critical of the state.

“As states set about establishing these programs, I’m not aware of any that skated through with an extraordinary and streamlined program the first go-round,” she said. “Because of the visibility of the issue, when there is a misstep it receives a lot of attention.”

But another EPA official, who did not want to be identified, complained that several aspects of the state program were “mismanaged” under Deukmejian, and he said that until recently state officials even passed up opportunities for direct help from the federal agency.

Critics, reviewing the record to date for signs of progress, say they are running out of patience.

“It’s all promise and no performance,” charged David B. Roe, a senior attorney with the Berkeley office of the Environmental Defense Fund and a frequent critic of the Deukmejian Administration’s record on toxics. “It’s all public relations.”

Deukmejian’s Plan

To back up the charge, he pointed to a detailed statewide cleanup plan released in May and held up by Deukmejian in his campaign television commercials. In that television spot, the governor asserts: “My comprehensive plan to clean up California is already under way and we’ll get the job done.”

However, Roe noted, the plan calls for the state to clean up only one dump by the end of 1986 at a cost of $5,000. The desert property, near the Salton Sea and alongside the All American Canal, was contaminated by drums of toxic waste illegally abandoned there more than a decade ago.

Deukmejian officials counter that the toxics plan calls for the cleanup of 13 of the 241 sites on the state list by June 30, the end of the fiscal year--a cautious pace, they concede.

Appointed in March to run the Department of Health Services’ toxics division, Cunningham and C. David Willis, deputy health services director, acknowledged that there were administrative problems when they stepped into their jobs. But they said that many difficulties were the product of trying to do too much too fast. And when they took the reins, they found 19% of the toxic division’s jobs unfilled, a very high vacancy rate for a government agency.

Willis said “the credibility of the agency” was damaged because officials in the past “had been forced by a variety of things to really promise more than could be delivered. Expectations were so great and had been pushed by so many things, that you set yourself up for failure.”

Cunningham said: “People think all you have to do is bring in a couple of front-end loaders and some dump trucks and haul this stuff out of here. But unless you characterize a site properly and define the extent of the problem and know the exact best way to clean it up, you’re going to be back in there years from now cleaning it up again.”

Good management and a careful step-by-step approach to cleanup will bring results, Willis and Cunningham contended.

Cleanups Cited

In the past 12 months, according to Willis, the division supervised the cleanup of 22 dumps--four of them with the help of regional water quality boards and local governments. But none of those sites are on the state’s priority list.

An earlier Department of Health Services audit showed at least some state involvement in 112 cleanups between January, 1983, and mid-1985. But in several cases the amount cleaned up was very small, and in others the role of state officials was minimal.

There is little dispute that California faces a serious hazardous waste problem.

A state-ordered sampling of wells supplying drinking water to large public water systems showed that 18% are contaminated with toxic industrial or agricultural chemicals--about a third of those at levels that exceed state standards.

Cancer-causing chemicals have been found in underground water in the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys--in wells used to supply water to a large part of the population of Los Angeles County. So severe is the problem that large areas in both valleys have been added to the federal Superfund cleanup list, even though the sources of contamination have not been identified and only short-term solutions--treatment of drinking water--are in sight.

One of the most infamous cleanup sites on the federal list is the Stringfellow Acid Pits in a granite canyon near Riverside where 34 million gallons of industrial waste was legally dumped between 1956 and 1972.

The pits and ponds of Stringfellow failed to hold the toxic chemicals. So poisons and pollutants from the dump continue creeping underground toward a water supply that serves the needs of 500,000 Southern Californians.

Covered by Dirt

The acid pits are covered by dirt, representing an unsuccessful effort to contain the toxic substances below.

“There are weeds growing over it. It looks quite pastoral,” noted Penny Newman, who chairs Concerned Neighbors in Action, a group of nearby residents who have been working to get Stringfellow cleaned up.

“But you can still see seepage where chemicals come through,” she said. “All they’ve done is disguise the problem.”

Under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state toxics division has had chief responsibility for the Stringfellow cleanup.

However, EPA’s regional toxics chief, Harry Seraydarian, was so concerned about the Administration’s ability to handle cleanup operations that in February he suggested stripping the state of its responsibility for managing Stringfellow.

In an internal EPA memo obtained by The Times, Seraydarian complained to EPA Deputy Regional Administrator John Wise that the state Department of Health Services’ cleanup program was “paralyzed” by proposed management changes and ongoing investigations, reviews and audits. Seraydarian recommended that the EPA unilaterally take responsibility for the Stringfellow cleanup away from the department if the state refuses to give it up voluntarily.

State Keeps Authority

In mid-April, after lengthy negotiations with the state’s new managers, Wise formally agreed to let the Deukmejian Administration continue to run the Stringfellow cleanup operation.

But the Seraydarian memo marked the low point for the Administration’s toxics programs during a period of intense outside scrutiny and bureaucratic upheaval.

In California, as in most of the country, state government enforces federal hazardous waste laws and much of the cleanup operations under the scrutiny of EPA officials.

The federal bureaucrats, who work for a Republican Administration in Washington, might be expected to look kindly on state programs run by a Republican governor in Sacramento. But that has not proved the case. Until recently the EPA has been increasingly critical of California’s efforts.

Even Deukmejian himself late last year confessed that he had “been a little disappointed” in the state’s performance. While noting that cleaning up toxic chemicals is a “very difficult, complex area,” he said he would like to be able to move ahead more quickly with the cleanup of major toxic waste sites like Stringfellow.

That Deukmejian statement was the first hint of impatience from the state’s chief executive, who in January, 1985, boasted: “In our first two years, we cleaned up more sites, launched more inspections and levied more fines than in all of the previous eight years.”

No one has challenged that claim, although Roe and others contend that the comparison to the Brown Administration is unfair because many of the important state and federal laws were not in place until Brown’s last year in office.

Complaint on Permits

And only three months after the Deukmejian statement, the EPA complained that the toxics division and the state Water Resources Control Board had failed to issue as many permits or conduct as many inspections of companies that generate hazardous waste and dump sites that dispose of them as the Administration had promised.

Too few of the worst polluters were being turned over to prosecutors for court action that might lead to fines and penalties, EPA officials said. To underscore the shortcomings, the federal agency withheld $643,000 in federal payments to California because the state failed to issue enough permits and conduct enough inspections between 1983 and 1985.

But that was before toxic cleanup became a hot political issue.

“Things have improved dramatically in the last year, significantly in the last few months,” EPA’s Seraydarian said in a recent interview.

It improved enough that the EPA proposed in March that the Deukmejian Administration be given full authority to enforce federal hazardous waste management laws within the state--but only after the toxics division management promised to improve inspection practices and record-keeping and to speed action against those that violate anti-pollution laws.

Despite the signs of reconciliation between the EPA and the state government, however, there are still problems.

The EPA will not allow hazardous waste from cleanups that are paid with federal funds to be hauled to any of the six privately run dumps in California that are licensed for the disposal of the most toxic of chemicals.

All of the dumps, which are regulated by the state, are leaking or have failed to meet various federal requirements for safe disposal of toxic wastes, according to an EPA spokesman. For now, wastes from EPA-financed cleanups must be hauled out of state.

Concerns Over Contracts

The EPA has also raised concerns about a series of contracts totaling $32.4 million between the state and seven private cleanup companies. By dividing the state into zones and negotiating fees for services in advance, the state toxics division hoped to use the contracts to speed up work at the more than 200 sites on the state’s priority cleanup list. Thus far, only $2.8 million in work has been authorized and only $1.4 million paid to the contractors.

The federal agency argues that the contracts did not meet federal rules for competitive bidding and that a “cost-plus-percentage-of-costs” payment system violates federal rules because it could result in excessive profits, Seraydarian said.

Because of the concerns, the federal agency will not allow the state to use the contractors to clean up sites where federal money has been promised.

Deputy Health Services Director Willis pointed out that the toxics division earlier this year brought in experts on contract procedures to avoid such problems in the future.

Speaking more generally, Deukmejian chief of staff Merksamer contends that many of the problems of the toxic cleanup and enforcement programs are the fault of Democratic lawmakers.

The toxics issue has “been unfortunately and regrettably politicized,” he said. “Toxics should be like U.S. foreign policy--bipartisan. It’s too important an issue to play partisan politics with, and unfortunately the Democrats have in my judgment played partisan politics with it.”

Proposed Overhaul

In 1985, Deukmejian proposed a major overhaul in the way that the state manages hazardous waste by consolidating many of the activities under a new Department of Waste Management. The department’s director would have broad powers and would serve on the governor’s cabinet.

But the initial plan, Administration officials later agreed, was badly flawed and probably unconstitutional as well. A revised proposal appeared to have strong bipartisan support in the Legislature. But it died after being swept into a squabble between Assembly Democrats and Republicans over an unrelated measure.

Deukmejian blamed Assembly Democrats for scuttling his plan to create the new department.

Last October, when the issue of creating a new toxics department was still unresolved, EPA auditors released a blistering attack on the Administration’s handling of $28.5 million in cleanup contracts at three of the state’s most notorious toxic dumps: Stringfellow, the McColl refinery dump in Fullerton and the Purity Oil site near Fresno.

The auditors charged that state officials had ignored federal and state competitive bidding requirements in some cases and had failed to negotiate the lowest possible price in others. As a result, the federal agency proposed holding up payments to the state totaling $1.8 million for the preliminary cleanup work at the dumps.

At the same time, the FBI launched an investigation of contracting practices at the Superfund sites. Administration officials say they do not know the outcome of that investigation, and a spokesman for the FBI office in Los Angeles said he could not comment on it.

Last November, Deukmejian took the offensive on the toxics issue--creating a task force to recommend improved solutions for the state’s growing hazardous waste problem. The panel, headed by UC Riverside Chancellor Theodore L. Hullar, included four Administration officials, four legislators, the chairman of the Sierra Club, Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, three industry representatives and others.

The group released its findings in May--calling for the gradual phase-out of disposal on land of untreated hazardous wastes. In the future, the task force report said, industry would have to burn or treat its toxic waste products. And the state would have to encourage the development of special disposal sites for treated materials that could not be destroyed.

Deukmejian responded to the release of the task force report by asking the Legislature to place a $200-million toxics bond measure on the Nov. 4 ballot.

The money would be used to clean up dump sites, to conduct research on alternatives to disposing of toxics on land, to develop special facilities for long-term storage of hazardous wastes that have been treated, and to supervise the cleanup of an estimated 31,000 underground storage tanks that are believed to be leaking toxic chemicals.

Democratic legislative leaders responded by faulting Deukmejian for spending little of the $100 million in cleanup bonds approved by voters in 1984 and appropriated by the Legislature last October. Typical of the critics was Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who accused the governor of playing election-year politics with the proposal.

After a good deal of negotiation, Brown and other leaders agreed to support a $150-million bond measure and Deukmejian endorsed the reduced spending plan. But the fate of the toxics bonds became linked to that of a number of other bond measures--particularly $100 million in library bonds--that Assembly Republicans refused to support. So the Deukmejian-backed bond measure died without coming up for a final vote.

The political impasse has left regional water board officials without money or staff to cope with the newly identified problem of leaky underground tanks.

Serious Threat

Many of those tanks present a serious threat to drinking water, said Robert P. Ghirelli, chief executive of the Regional Water Quality Control Board in Los Angeles. He said his agency is in desperate need of additional workers to cope with the underground tank problem.

“We’re bursting at the seams with the number of cases that are referred to us,” he said. “We’re having to tell local agencies that it is pretty much up to them to deal with it.”

The political accusations and the bureaucratic wrangling have not solved the problem of how to go about cleaning up the worst of the toxic dumps.

At Stringfellow, neighborhood activist Newman expressed frustration at the continuous furor that has contributed little to the cleanup and that may have only added to delays.

“Everything came to a grinding halt about November because the state was so embroiled in responding to investigations,” she said. “We’re disgruntled enough at what has been taking place, we are open to new ideas and new directions. We are tired of politicians. Period.”