Westminster Neighborhood Warned to Steer Clear of Substance : Residents Angry About Sludge in Yards, Pools

Homeowners in a Westminster neighborhood said it was no surprise to receive notices this week from state and county agencies that the tar-like sludge oozing in their yards and around their swimming pools is a highly acidic and potentially hazardous waste.

The residents said they have dealt with the problem for years.

“I’ve been fighting this stuff for 2 1/2 years,” said Ann Reihl, who lives with her husband and five children in the 7100 block of Sowell Avenue, the area that county and state officials have targeted as the nucleus of oily slicks. “It’s a lovely mess.”

Gloria Delzeith, another Sowell Avenue resident, said the noxious substance has been seeping to the surface in her yard since she and her husband bought the house nine years ago.

‘Smells Worse’ in Summer

“It’s there all the time. In the summertime, it smells worse than during the rest of the year,” she said. “The smell will pick up again in a couple of months.”

Divisions of the Orange County Health Care Agency and the state Department of Health Services jointly mailed a letter this week to residents of Sowell Avenue and Allen Street, which intersects Sowell, advising residents there to refrain from touching the black sludge or inhaling the fumes it emits.

The state Department of Health Services has scheduled a public meeting April 22 to tell area residents of its $200,000 investigation to test the toxicity levels of the sludge and soil, and to measure the extent of the contaminated ground, according to Angelo Bellomo, director of the department’s toxic substances control division in Southern California.

A study of the development of the neighborhood revealed that the homes, lying just east of the San Diego Freeway and the Westminster Mall, were built over pits used during World War II to dump acid and oil waste, Bellomo said.

A dairy company operated on the land during the 1930s and 1940s, when oil waste was being dumped there, Bellomo said. When developers built the homes in the 1960s, the Regional Water Control Board ordered the builders to deposit the waste in trenches 10 feet below the surface, Bellomo said, adding that the trenches may have been capped with a concrete slab.

Similar to McColl

Robert E. Merryman, the county’s director of environmental health, said Wednesday that the sludge is “similar in substance” to the hazardous material at the now-abandoned McColl dump in Fullerton, where high-octane refinery wastes from World War II and drilling muds were deposited.

The McColl dump became one of the earliest toxic waste sites selected for cleanup under the federal Superfund, but a $26.5-million plan to excavate the hazardous materials and haul them to a facility in Kern County was blocked by a court order in the spring of 1985.

A Superior Court judge ordered the state to conduct a full environmental impact study, which was to be completed early this year. However, with new tests being conducted at the site, the study is not expected to be finished before early 1988.

Unlike residents living near the McColl dump, who have complained of headaches and nausea and have sued seeking damages, homeowners living on Sowell and Allen have filed no health complaints, Merryman said.

He added that the Westminster site “is not an emergency situation.”

“There is no health hazard out there right now unless there’s this black ooze and you try to involve yourself with it.”

Reihl, however, said that all five of her children, ranging in age from 7 to 19, have experienced breathing problems and eye irritation since the family moved into their home 3 1/2 years ago.

Delzeith also complained that the smell of the sludge aggravates her 15-year-old son’s asthma and that her husband dug a trench in a bid to drain the material out of their backyard.

“All I want to do is get out of here so my kids can breathe,” said Reihl, who has suedthe real estate firm that sold her the house and the home’s previous owner.

Both parties knew about the sludge when they sold her the home, Reihl contended: “When we bought the house, I saw this black stuff on the pool, and I asked what it was, and they told me it was a cushion for the pool in case of an earthquake.”

Mike Torres Jr. said the sludge has been present in his family’s Sowell Avenue yard “for years and years.” It has been particularly obvious, he said, since the family put in the pool about 23 years ago.

Torres said the family still shovels some of it off the lawn and that “if you get it on your hands, you really have to wash your hands good to get it all off.”

Reihl said a county health official told her not to let children swim in her pool because the sludge seeps up along the outer deck and drops into the water.

County health officials first investigated the sludge in January, 1986, when another neighborhood resident noticed the sludge leaking through a crack in his pool, Merryman said. After tests showed the sludge to be “very, very acidic,” the county classified it a hazardous waste and turned over its investigation to state health officials, Merryman said.