Court Orders Shutdown of Anaheim Auto Salvage Firm

A court order has forced the shutdown of an Anaheim auto salvage firm that has stockpiled 50,000 tons of residue laced with toxic PCBs, even as city officials prepare to vote on possible revocation of the company’s operation permit, authorities said.

The effects of the latest court order and the ongoing controversy surrounding Orange County Steel Salvage Inc. hit the firm’s employees hard last week when 30 of its 36 employees were laid off, attorneys for the company said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the order halting operations at Orange County’s only automobile shredder and scrap steel salvage yard was expected to affect local scrap and auto dismantlers and tow truck companies that now will have to haul old cars and metal to shredder companies in Los Angeles County and elsewhere.

The company’s representatives also warned city and state officials that people will abandon cars alongside roads.

“There’s going to be an impact,” conceded James McNally of the Southern California regional office of the state Department of Health Services toxics unit. “Unfortunately, we’ve been dealing with this matter and we’ve been telling (owner) George (Adams Jr.) since March of 1984” to rid the site of the waste, he said. “This is not an overnight surprise.”

Steel Salvage had no choice but to agree to a temporary restraining order that forces it to stop shredding cars for scrap metal as of last Friday, state Deputy Atty. Gen. Don A. Robinson said. Had the firm not halted shredding, its owner could have been found in contempt of court at a hearing scheduled for April 7, he said.

Adams was ordered last year to remove 1,000 tons of newly generated waste each month. But on Feb. 13, he made his last shipment. The Arizona landfills where he had been hauling the waste were warned in late January by that state’s health services department to cease accepting the material. Preliminary Arizona test results showed high lead levels in the waste--results that OC Steel has disputed.

Because the firm stopped complying with the order to remove waste, Robinson said he would have sought a contempt-of-court ruling had Adams not agreed to stop shredding.

Robert Thornton, an attorney for the salvage company, called the order to cease shredding “an interim problem.”

Thornton said recent state results confirm OC Steel tests that the newly generated waste is not hazardous. As soon as Arizona confirms those results, clearing the way for disposal there, he said, the company will resume shredding and removing the new waste.

And in the meantime, the shutdown means “that you’re going to have an abandoned automobile problem in Orange County,” Thornton predicted.

But Robinson said, “The state’s position has been that he should remove the waste as produced. He has an option. The option (to take the waste to a more expensive landfill designated for hazardous waste) for him is too expensive, so he shouldn’t be producing it.”

Removal of the 50,000-plus ton of shredded waste could cost Adams over $20 million if it is taken to a landfill designated for hazardous waste, McNally said.

OC Steel officials have said the yard no longer is shredding items known to contain highly toxic PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, a suspected carcinogen. But the old pile, estimated at 50,000 tons or more, does contain PCBs, which must be disposed of in special landfills certified to accept toxic waste.

While attorneys from the state and Steel Salvage negotiate an agreement to rid the Anaheim site of both new and old waste, city officials are scheduled to decide next week whether to close down the business.

On Feb. 17, the City Council agreed to grant Steel Salvage a reprieve and await the court hearing scheduled Thursday in a state health department lawsuit against the company. Council members, who have expressed growing irritation with Adams’ and the company’s failure to dispose of the waste, said then that they would no longer postpone a decision.

On Tuesday, John Poole, the head of the city’s code enforcement department, said he plans to recommend to the council next week that it pull the company’s permit because it poses a threat.