25% Proposed Hike for Toxics Cleanup Quickly Challenged

In a budget that is generally tightfisted on health and welfare spending, Gov. George Deukmejian called Thursday for a 25% increase in programs for cleaning up toxic dumps and regulating hazardous chemicals, making the toxics problem one of his highest spending priorities.

Deukmejian’s critics almost immediately challenged his commitment to solving the state’s toxics woes, however, pointing out that a large part of the proposed increase is money that has been available but has gone unspent for years.

Missing from the governor’s proposal is money for the cleanup of thousands of privately owned leaking underground storage tanks.

Also omitted from the budget is any money for implementing Proposition 65, the anti-toxics measure that won overwhelmingly on Nov. 4.

Deukmejian officials promised, however, that money for Proposition 65, which adds tough new controls over chemicals believed to cause birth defects and cancer, will be added to the budget proposal later in the year after the Administration has reviewed the full effect of the initiative.

The budget would provide $18.2 million for repairing and cleaning up state-owned underground tanks, $12.4 million for removing asbestos from state buildings and $9.8 million for replacing state equipment containing PCBs, fire-retardant chemicals that are believed to cause cancer.

In a detailed summary of its plan for dealing with hazardous wastes, the Administration listed 14 state agencies that would spend $280 million in 1987-88 under Deukmejian’s proposal--an increase of 25%, or $56 million, over what is being spent in the current fiscal year.

‘Smoke and Mirrors’

In contrast, overall spending on health and welfare programs would decline next year by about 1%--in part because of the Administration’s plan to transfer $477 million in public health programs to local government.

Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the Senate Toxics Committee, complained that the apparent increase in spending on toxics is deceptive. “It is smoke and mirrors,” he said.

Virtually all of the increase, Torres said, is money already available for toxics cleanup during the current fiscal year but unspent--$49 million from a 1984 toxics bond measure and $7 million from tidelands oil revenue appropriated for hazardous waste cleanup.

Torres, one of the principal backers of Proposition 65, also objected to Deukmejian’s failure to provide any money for putting the initiative into place, even though he has promised to do so later in the year.

The anti-toxics measure requires the governor to prepare by March 1 a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects. By the next year, any business that knowingly exposes the public to significant amounts of a listed chemical must develop methods to warn of the exposure. By November, 1988, businesses would not be allowed to release unsafe levels of any of the substances on the list. Failure to comply would expose the companies to citizens’ lawsuits and fines.

Both supporters and opponents of the ballot measure are calling for a clear policy on how chemicals are to be listed and what safety standards ought to be.

Deukmejian’s failure to provide any money in the budget released Thursday for Proposition 65 “is a prelude to failure in terms of meeting the deadlines,” said Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), another of the initiative’s chief sponsors. “It took him more than a year to implement the lottery,” Hayden said. “I hope and pray he doesn’t believe that he can delay implementation of Proposition 65 that long.”

Other critics are angry that the Administration’s budget would provide no money for monitoring and cleaning up leaking underground tanks that are the responsibility of private business. It has been estimated that there are as many as 200,000 underground storage tanks in the state and that more than 30,000 may be leaking toxic chemicals that threaten underground water supplies.

‘Avoidable . . . Problems’

“I have to give the governor credit in cleaning up the (state-owned) underground storage tanks,” said Carl Pope, political director of the Sierra Club. But he described the failure to provide money for the privately owned tanks--the largest part of the problem--as “very distressing.” That view is shared by representatives of other environmental groups.

“The Deukmejian Administration’s failure to provide any leadership in the cleaning up of underground tanks will make water quality problems worse, substantially drive up the costs of cleanup and create avoidable environmental problems,” said Corey Brown, general counsel for the Planning and Conservation League.

Last year, Deukmejian backed a $150-million toxics bond issue that would have provided $60 million for monitoring and supervising the cleanup of underground tanks. The bond proposal was killed, however, in a legislative battle over which bond measure would be placed on the November, 1986, ballot. Even if the measure were revised in the current legislative session, it would be June, 1988, before voters could decide the issue.

The Administration has no proposal to deal with the privately owned underground tanks, said the state Department of Finance’s Terri Parker.