DWP Pays Fine and Steps Up Removal of PCBs

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is accelerating the phase-out of electrical equipment containing toxic PCBs as part of a settlement of a federal complaint involving PCB leakage and other violations at department installations.

Under terms of the settlement, the DWP also paid a penalty of $50,000 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which charged the utility late last year with numerous violations of PCB disposal, storage and record-keeping rules.

While opting to settle rather than fight the charges, DWP officials have characterized the violations as minor and the inspections that led to the complaint “as a bit of a witch hunt.” EPA officials said last week that they handled the case as they do all others.

DWP officials said the settlement, reached in August, does not change their plans to voluntarily eliminate more than 100,000 pieces of equipment containing PCBs--short for polychlorinated biphenyls--by 1989. However, the agreement commits the utility to phasing out one category of equipment--PCB regulators--at several distributing stations by the end of 1987, which is sooner than originally planned.

PCBs are heat-resistant compounds that for decades were added to cooling oil to prevent fires in heavy machinery and electrical distribution equipment, such as the transformers and capacitors that are installed on utility poles.

Probable Human Carcinogen

In recent years, the EPA has classified PCBs as a probable human carcinogen and has banned their manufacture. But the chemical is ubiquitous in the environment and is found at detectable levels in the fat of nearly all Americans. And millions of pounds of PCBs are still in use in electrical equipment.

In addition to banning further manufacture of PCBs, federal rules require the phase-out of some PCB equipment and require safe storage and disposal and careful inventory records.

The EPA originally proposed a $251,000 penalty in the 40-count complaint it served on the city last December. In agreeing to pay a penalty of $50,000, the DWP did not admit violating PCB rules.

Fifteen counts involved minor PCB leakage from dozens of pieces of equipment at 15 locations. The leaks were discovered during EPA inspections conducted in June, 1985.

The leaked oil, which DWP officials said was cleaned up, contained PCB concentrations of 50 to several hundred thousand parts per million, according to DWP and EPA officials. Most of the leaks were from capacitors, regulators and transformers, although leakage at a maintenance yard at 6000 Van Nuys Blvd. was from storage drums containing PCB oil, according to the complaint.

Many of the other 25 counts involved lack of required inventory records and failure to properly mark PCB equipment and storage areas.

DWP officials have stressed that the leakage was minute and was confined to department installations that are not publicly accessible. There “wasn’t and isn’t” any threat to public health, Norman E. Nichols, DWP assistant general manager for power, told the Board of Water and Power commissioners in August.

‘Bit of a Witch Hunt’

“My candid impression of the whole exercise was that it was a bit of a witch hunt,” Nichols told the commissioners, according to a tape of the meeting.

“No one, to our knowledge, has been cited for the types of record-keeping deficiencies that they allege that we had, and certainly no one has been cited for seepage which, in the total, amounted to . . . less than 20 ounces in some several different sites,” Nichols said.

But EPA officials said they were no harder on the DWP than on anyone else.

“Everything that we did to L.A. was just totally the norm,” said David Mc Fadden, assistant regional counsel with the EPA in San Francisco. “We get everybody for those violations, and they all complain.”

EPA officials said they do not know if the leakage estimate of 20 ounces is correct. “We’re not talking about a major spill,” said Rich Vaille, chief of the toxics and pesticides branch with the EPA in San Francisco.

$23 Million Spent

In an interview last week, Nichols said the DWP has spent about $23 million of the $27 million to $28 million that will be needed to replace all devices that have significant levels of PCBs with equipment using non-hazardous mineral oil.

He said the changeover will involve a total of 120,000 transformers, 1,500 regulators and 500 capacitor installations with up to 50,000 individual capacitors.

Nichols said removal of this equipment from public access areas, such as utility poles, is virtually complete, and that PCB devices are being removed from controlled areas as well.

“By mid-’89, it’s our intention to be out of the PCB business,” he said.

The replacement program goes well beyond federal requirements--which allow continued use of some PCB equipment.

Although PCBs are tightly regulated, there is still considerable uncertainty about their effect on human health--prompting some scientists and chemical industry officials to argue that their fearsome reputation is not deserved.

Severe Skin Rash

PCBs are known to cause chloracne, a skin rash that can be severe. Although the EPA has classified PCBs as a probable human carcinogen, based on animal studies, there is no proof of a higher cancer risk for exposed people, such as utility workers.

But two proven characteristics of PCBs are particularly worrisome to some scientists and environmental officials.

One is that PCBs can be converted by high heat into the much more toxic dioxin and furan compounds. The other is that PCBs are extremely long-lived. The tremendous resistance to heat that made them commercially valuable also makes them very slow to decompose once dumped or spilled into water or soil.