Junk Cars Litter Byways as Scrap Industry Rusts

‘Abandoned vehicles are a way of life here. You report them . . . and sometimes the cars will stay there for months.’

--Peter Mendoza

President

Wilmington Homeowners Assn.

Jo Ann Wysocki had tired of hearing about abandoned cars in Wilmington. So when her friends complained about a dilapidated Volkswagen lying derelict behind a bowling alley, Wysocki decided to pick up the phone and report it.

The date was July 8, 1985.

“At the time I thought, ‘Oh, they’ll just come out and take care of it,’ ” Wysocki said. But it never happened. Last month, Wysocki said, she saw the same rusted hulk--and another one beside it--on the same central-Wilmington site. And in the meantime, the community’s abandoned-car problem has only worsened.

Wilmington residents now point sadly to a bumper crop of the battered, unwanted vehicles. The useless hulks have rolled in like a veritable motorcade onto streets, fields and parking lots.

“It’s a problem Wilmington has always had, unfortunately,” Wysocki said. “But I definitely believe it’s gotten worse. I actually see people living in those cars. It keeps them out of the rain.”

Peter Mendoza, president of the 500-member Wilmington Homeowners Assn., said some of the vehicles appear to be used as hiding places for illegal drugs; others appear to be not-so-clandestine meeting places for prostitution.

‘Way of Life Here’

“Abandoned vehicles are a way of life here,” Mendoza said. “You report them . . . and sometimes the cars will stay there for months.”

The problem is not that too many cars are getting old and breaking down. Rather, the causes lie deep in an industry that most residents never see or even think about: the noisy, never-ending process of auto shredding, where unusable wrecked cars are turned into recyclable steel.

In recent years, that industry has run head-on into difficult economic times--caused by tough new environmental laws, rising costs and sagging prices for scrap steel. The result has been a bottleneck in the normal life cycle of cars.

Today, industry leaders say, too few cars are going that final mile. Instead, they are being left on city streets, particularly in blue-collar communities like Wilmington, East Los Angeles and portions of the San Fernando Valley, where large numbers of older, poorly running cars help fuel the problem.

“We’re talking about . . . tens of thousands of cars each year” abandoned in Los Angeles, said Jeff Druyun, chairman of a Los Angeles city task force that was convened in December to address the problem. “The streets can be absolutely cleaned of cars and trash, and two days later (abandoned) cars are reappearing on those same streets. Literally, as fast as streets can be cleaned of these hulks . . . new ones are appearing.”

200 Junkyards

The task force, established by harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores and San Fernando Valley Councilman Joel Wachs, will look closely at Wilmington, where nearly 200 junkyards already are overflowing with broken-down cars, Druyun said. It also will address the operation of giant auto-shredding plants like the Hugo Neu-Proler Co. on Terminal Island, the West Coast’s largest recycler of junk cars.

Hugo Neu-Proler is typical of major shredding operations. The 22-acre plant is a surreal world, where mountainous heaps of scrap metal extend nearly as far as the eye can see. Trucks arrive every day carrying hundreds of cars, crushed into cubes, mostly from junkyards that no longer need them for parts, said Jim Wotherspoon, the company’s director of safety and environmental management.

Those cars travel one by one up a steep conveyor and tumble into the shredder, where they are ripped to pieces by 500-pound hammers and massive electromagnets.

Hugo Neu-Proler and two similar plants--Clean Steel Inc. on the Carson-Long Beach border and Orange County Steel Salvage Inc. in Anaheim--handle virtually all of the auto shredding for Los Angeles and Orange counties, industry officials say.

Price of Cars Down

But the three plants, which now process about 55,000 cars a month, are well below capacity and are paying too little for broken-down cars to bring them in off the streets, plant operators said.

“The only thing that’s caused this (abandoned-car) problem is the shredders not shredding,” Wotherspoon said. “We could run a lot more (cars) than we do. We could handle . . . practically all the (junk) cars in Southern California.”

One reason for the low volume has been the low export value of scrap metal, according to industry officials. In 1982, shredding firms got about $125 a ton for scrap steel delivered to Japan, but in 1984 they got only about $75 at ton, said Harry Faversham, executive vice president of Clean Steel in Carson.

Japan, which once imported great volumes of scrap from West Coast shredding plants, has cut back heavily on its steel production, Faversham said. At the same time, the California steel market has declined severely; only one small mill in San Bernardino County still operates and purchases scrap metal, Faversham said.

“Japan is buying the bulk of its material from Russia right now,” he said. “There’s very little of (our scrap metal) going to Japan; most of it is going to Korea.”

Although scrap prices have rallied slightly in the past year, to about $98 a ton, the slump has had a ripple effect on the junk-car business, industry officials said. Shredders are offering lower prices for wrecked cars--$30 to $35 a ton currently--and auto dismantling yards, or junkyards, no longer see junk cars as a quick source of easy cash.

A few years ago, dismantlers would eagerly buy such cars from private owners and tow them for scrap, said Terry Fiskin, the new executive director of the Southern California Auto Dismantlers Assn. A car owner could get get $25 to $125 even for a badly damaged shell, based purely on its scrap value, Fiskin said.

But now, unless junk cars contain valuable used parts, many auto dismantlers won’t even touch them, he said. Many times the car owner is lucky to get the shell towed away, even if he pays for it.

“Scrap prices are so low, the dismantlers are saying, ‘We don’t want the car,’ ” Fiskin said. “So the car just sits.”

Faversham said it is uncertain whether scrap-metal prices will bounce back any time soon. Meanwhile, some operators contend that a larger problem is the waste from the shredders--the ground-up steering wheels, seat cushions, dashboards and other non-metal parts that cannot be recycled. Industry officials say a 2,000-pound car will break down into about 1,500 pounds of steel and 500 pounds of the brownish, unusable byproduct.

“A big shredder like Hugo Neu-Proler . . . produces 45,000 to 50,000 tons (of waste) per year,” said Jim McNally, a program manager for the state Department of Health Services’ Toxic Substances Control Division. Until a few years ago, McNally said, “That waste was routinely hauled off to your local garbage landfill.”

But in 1983, state officials joined with Los Angeles city and county regulators to begin testing the waste. What they found rocked the industry: Shredder waste invariably failed to meet strict California limits for lead, primarily because the shredding involved car batteries, which contain lead, and mufflers, tailpipes and gas tanks, which contain built-up lead deposits from gasoline. Much of that lead was ending up in the piles of waste, where it is able to leach into soils and underground water supplies, McNally said.

In early 1984, state health officials declared shredder waste hazardous, meaning it no longer could be hauled to ordinary dumps; rather, McNally said, it had to be hauled to one of California’s two specially approved toxic-waste landfills--at Casmalia in Santa Barbara County or at Kettleman Hills in the western San Joaquin Valley--or trucked out of state.

Industry officials railed against the ruling. Orange County shredder George Adams Jr., the most outspoken critic of the new regulations, said California shredders suddenly faced an economic hardship that exists in no other state. Waste that can be dumped for $6 a ton at ordinary landfills costs $270 a ton to dump at one of the toxic-waste sites, largely because of strict waste-management laws and federally required monitoring systems at the dumps, Adams said.

Shipping fees add $30 a ton to that, he said.

“The whole cost is ridiculous,” Adams said. “There are 205 shredders in the country . . . and six of them can’t go to the dump.”

Adams’ Orange County Steel Salvage is one that has refused to pay the hauling cost; instead he has waged a two-year battle against regulatory officials, stockpiling the waste despite a state lawsuit and possible fines that could total $25,000 a day. Other shredders have begun complying with regulations despite escalating costs that have dramatically altered the junk-car market.

The battle over auto-shredder waste has centered largely on the enormous difference between state lead standards and federal standards. State health officials acknowledge that the California limits are about 20 times tougher than the federal limits, even though the permitted level of the compound is identical--five parts per million.

Different Test Methods

The paradox is the result of different testing methods, McNally said. Federal officials expose a sample to a diluted acetic acid solution, then analyze the chemicals that leach from the sample. State health officials use a similar test, McNally said, but they expose the sample to a different kind of acid--citric acid, the kind found in grapefruit.

“Shredder waste always fails the (California) test,” McNally said. Even when testing samples that pass the federal test, he said, “we get an average (lead content) of 200 parts per million down to 100 parts per million.”

The sharply differing test results gave shredders a strong argument to challenge California limits. In an interview, Adams sharply criticized the state test, saying engineering reports prove only harmless amounts of lead would seep into soils and ground water. He said the citric acid used in the state test is never a problem at garbage dumps because the acid is not found naturally in that environment.

“The (engineering reports) have calculated it would take 300,000 years for this (waste) to leach into the water,” he said. “We can’t dispose of this locally, but you can go dump it . . . in Arizona. It’s just incredible, the thought process.”

McNally, who said he was unaware of any such engineering reports, said state officials were deliberately cautious in setting the toxic standards. It is very possible that garbage mixed with rainwater could produce any number of solutions that could cause the leaching of lead.

“You cannot, in a laboratory, simulate all the conditions in a landfill,” he said. “If we were going to err, we wanted to err on the conservative side.”

Problems Recognized

Yet state health officials also acknowledged the industry’s problems. As early as 1984, in fact, the state began looking for ways to accommodate the shredders by enabling the shredder waste to be returned to ordinary landfills, said David Leu, chief of the health department’s Alternative Technology Section.

Leu said shredders were asked to get the lead out--in the hope that waste with less lead might be suitable for those ordinary dumps. So in 1984, shredders began requiring wrecking yards and private car owners to remove batteries and gas tanks even before cars reached the shredding plant.

The practice, which still continues, coincided with falling scrap prices to reduce the incentive for junk-car owners to cash in on the wrecks, shredders said. One Clean Steel employee, who declined to be named, described the disappointment of car owners who now call the company, thinking they can get good money for a damaged shell. The first surprise is often that the car is nearly worthless.

“People say, ‘How do I get rid of this car?’ ” the employee said. “Then I tell them the requirements, which are kind of staggering. . . . They have to remove the muffler, the tailpipe, the gas tank and the battery. We don’t buy tires. We don’t pick up the car; they have to get it here.

“I think some people probably just give up.”

Lead Levels Reduced

As it turned out, the removal of lead-containing parts dramatically reduced lead levels in the waste, but not enough for the waste to return to ordinary landfills, state health official Leu said. Shredders said they continue the practice in hopes they can still work out solutions with state officials.

In the meantime, shredders are still faced with huge disposal costs that are continuing to affect the junk-car market.

Clean Steel chose to comply with disposal regulations by hauling its waste to Arizona, where it can be legally dumped because it complies with federal standards that apply in that state, the company’s Faversham said.

The firm, which processes about 15,000 cars per month, saves money by not hauling its waste to a toxic-waste landfill, but the company’s disposal costs have still risen enormously--from about $1 to $56 a ton, Faversham said. He insisted, however, that the cost has not lowered the price he is able to pay for junk cars.

“We’ve spent over $3 million in the last three years disposing of material,” he said. “We eat the whole cost, and it shows on our balance sheet. You lose a hell of a lot of money. . . .

“We’re having trouble breaking even.”

Waste Stockpiled

Hugo Neu-Proler was another matter. The firm initially balked at hauling its waste and began stockpiling the material at Terminal Island. At one point, state officials estimated, huge mounds of the material totaled 30,000 to 40,000 tons, creating what McNally called a serious fire danger.

“They can get so hot (inside) they can spontaneously combust,” McNally said, likening the mounds to giant compost piles. “You see a little wisp of smoke and that means there’s a fire inside.”

That was happening regularly on Terminal Island, McNally said. “So you’ve got to get some brave soul and a bulldozer and push that material away . . . and then the flames get really big because you’ve exposed it to oxygen. Then you’ve got to get a hose in there and squirt the hell out of it.”

Plastics in those piles turn to noxious fumes when they burn, creating additional danger, Leu added.

Los Angeles officials, citing numerous hazardous-waste, worker-safety and fire-code violations, filed suit against Hugo Neu-Proler in 1985, collecting fines of $145,500, said Deputy City Atty. Steven Tekosky, head of the office’s environmental unit. Of the total, $120,000 was collected for hazardous-waste and fire violations, the largest amount ever collected by the city attorney’s office for those kinds of violations, Tekosky said.

But since the suit was filed, Tekosky said, the firm has taken a lead role in the industry in dealing with the wastes.

New Technology Developed

Hugo Neu-Proler began hauling its waste to Arizona, then spent several million dollars developing a new technology for treating the waste, the company’s Wotherspoon said. The process involves chemically encapsulating the lead and other toxic metals within a “sticky” potassium-silicate compound that prevents them from leaching into the ground, Wotherspoon said. But its development also had its price in abandoned cars.

While the system was being perfected and installed, Wotherspoon said, the plant went through several long closures--four months in 1984 and more than half of 1985 and 1986.

“We couldn’t see generating . . . more waste we couldn’t dispose of” economically, Wotherspoon said. “The cost of dealing with waste affects everything.”

During the plant’s closures, the abandoned-car problem worsened visibly in Wilmington and the San Fernando Valley, two places the company operates “feeder yards” to receive junk cars from dismantling yards and crush them before shredding, Wotherspoon said. As the feeder yards closed, dismantlers were left with two options--sell to other crushers, sometimes at greater inconvenience, or stop dealing in junk cars.

Dave Bearden, owner of the 7th Street Garage in San Pedro, said he has watched the problem grow in Wilmington. Bearden, the official tow operator for the Los Angeles Police Department’s Harbor Division, tows and impounds cars left on the streets for more than 72 hours.

Growing Inventory

A few years ago, he operated three lots to impound vehicles. Now, Bearden said, he runs five lots, and his inventory of impounded cars has risen from about 450 to 600. About 30 additional cars come in every day, and about half of those are abandoned wrecks that will never be claimed.

He is not about to catch up.

“To get ahead of the game . . . we might have to (tow) 50 a day,” Bearden said. “Because of the real or imagined dangers of toxic waste, their value is so low we can’t do anything but give them away. It’s really a shame. My revenues haven’t increased anywhere near the increased business. The cars barely pay the rent on the (new) lots. It’s really that bad.”

As a member of the abandoned-car task force, Bearden is looking for solutions. One proposal, he said, would allow a car worth less than $100 to be destroyed after 15 days if the owner does not claim it. Currently, he said, such a car must be held 45 days and the owner or owners must be contacted by registered letter, costing about $1.70 apiece.

“I’ve seen as many as six parties that have to be notified” on one impound, Bearden said. A change in the law would reduce the costs of handling those cars and clear space in impound lots to get more off the streets, he said.

New Process Approved

Meanwhile, state health officials say they hold high hopes for the new treatment process developed by Hugo Neu-Proler. The company won final approval in November to begin dumping the detoxified waste at ordinary landfills, and the firm now hopes to sell the technology to rival shredders, Wotherspoon said.

Although the process is expensive, it is less costly than shipping the waste out of state, he said. It has enabled the giant Terminal Island plant to return to normal processing capacity.

Yet the industry in Southern California still faces a difficult road, state officials said. One reason, McNally said, is the continuing legal fight between regulators and Orange County Steel Salvage, which processes about 12,000 cars a day and has never hauled its waste.

That firm is running out of room on its 32-acre site, McNally said. Its existing stockpile, which sits directly over a drinking-water aquifer, is now longer than a football field, about just as wide, and about 35 feet high--and looks something like a modern-art sculpture, the state health official said.

“It’s beyond incredible,” he said. “And it’s growing by the day.”

It was hoped that the innovative Hugo Neu-Proler technology might provide some solution to the standoff without bankrupting the company, a situation that could only worsen the abandoned-car problem, state officials said. But last January, health officials discovered that the stockpile also contained particularly high, unacceptable levels of PCBs--chemicals suspected of causing cancer in humans.

PCBs Not Contained

The discovery may throw a new wrench into the entire shredding industry, according to McNally. The compounds, found in the rubber and plastics of many older cars, are not captured by the new Hugo Neu-Proler technology, he said.

“If we find that those (PCBs) are consistently high in the entire industry, I think we’re going to have utter chaos,” McNally said. “I think that would shut down the entire industry. It’s mind-boggling.”

Officials at Hugo Neu-Proler and Clean Steel say they have begun testing their waste for PCBs and so far have met the existing federal limits. But Orange County Steel Salvage is another matter. The results of the tests mean that the firm cannot reduce its huge stockpile simply by transporting the waste across state lines; it must go to one of the costly toxic-waste dumps.

Based on tonnage estimates, McNally said, the cost of hauling it to such a landfill would be substantial--about $25 million.

“I think that (estimate) is a bit high,” company President Adams said. But he admitted that the problem has become sticky. “This whole problem with shredder waste has just gotten out of hand.”