Anaheim Sets Hearing on Closure of Toxic-Scrap Salvage Yard

The Anaheim City Council moved Tuesday to shut down a salvage yard in Anaheim that has failed consistently to dispose of a 50,000-ton pile of residue containing toxic PCBs.

Council members, irate that Orange County Steel Salvage Inc. has failed to meet new restrictions, set a Jan. 20 public hearing to decide whether to revoke the company’s permits.

Meanwhile, an attorney for the steel salvage firm said Tuesday that the owner wants to leave Anaheim and has found a “remote” site, which he would not identify. Escrow on the $572,000 unidentified property will close Friday, according to attorney Floyd L. Farano.

Farano said he would not disclose the site for fear that the state would interfere with the transaction.

“The Department of Health Services has done whatever is possible to stop us in our tracks,” Farano told the council.

But the company still would need permits from the state, the Environmental Protection Agency and the local agency if it intends to dispose of PCB-contaminated waste from shredded cars at another site, according to Angelo Bellomo, chief of the Southern California toxics division of the state Department of Health Services. That process could take from several months to a couple of years, he said.

State health officials filed a lawsuit Sept. 17 to block further waste disposal at the site on East Frontera Road, require a cleanup plan and collect unspecified fines. A hearing is set for Jan. 12 in Orange County Superior Court.

“I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again: We’ve got to stop shredding,” said Councilman Irv Pickler, who called the growing pile of waste a “public health hazard.”

The firm’s owner, George Adams Jr., said Tuesday that his company shreds about 500 cars a day. He has repeatedly argued that old cars and other junk would line streets and metal peddlers and other scrap related firms would be hurt if Steel Salvage goes out of business.

On Sept. 2, during a sometimes heated four-hour public hearing, the council voted 3 to 2 to keep the company open. But it imposed new restrictions on the operation, which has generated a pile of residue found to contain nearly double the level of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls considered hazardous by the federal government. PCBs are suspected of being a human carcinogen.

The restrictions imposed three months ago require that the company:

- Rid its property daily of new shredder waste.

- Keep new shredder waste separate from the existing pile.

- Submit weekly reports documenting the shipment of shredder waste from the premises.

- Get rid of an overhead crane and stop charging the public admission at the entrance to the parts operation at the auto salvage yard.

According to Anaheim Code Enforcement Supervisor John Poole, the company has not complied with those conditions.

Pickler, angrily listing the company’s violations, said, “We’ve got to stop the shredding. The people who are operating this have hoodwinked us.”

Farano said the company unsuccessfully tried a new technique for separating those automobile parts containing PCBs--such as mufflers and transmissions--from others, such as steering wheels and dashboards. Farano said samples taken after the separation test still show PCB amounts in excess of the state maximum of 50 parts per million for solid waste.

Bellomo, the state health official, said the issue of whether dashboards and other auto parts contain PCBs is under review. “That’s a matter that has to be looked at,” he said.

But at least one California company, Hugo-Neu-Proler at Terminal Island in Los Angeles County, has successfully segregated auto parts and treated the equipment to chemically change the physical characteristics of the waste, rendering it hazard free, Bellomo said.

Farano said his client has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultant tests, soil samples and other measures.

“I don’t know what we can do to please the council anymore,” Farano said, adding that tests have shown the toxic material is not reaching water tables by leeching into the soil.

During Tuesday’s council meeting, Steel Salvage also lost on its request for a rehearing for a permit to store the waste--a request denied by both the city’s Planning Commission and the council--and a request that the council modify the restrictions set Sept. 2.

State officials have told the company it can dispose of its junk at a landfill designated for toxic materials. But Adams, the firm’s owner, has said the cost of dumping at such a landfill would bankrupt him.