Stringfellow Cleanup Arguments Delivered to Judge

Arguments over a report that corporations should pay for the $40-million to $50-million cleanup of the Stringfellow acid pits were under submission Wednesday awaiting a ruling.

The September, 1986, report by court-appointed Special Master Harry V. Peetris urged U.S. District Judge James Ideman to issue a summary judgment against the defendants, meaning there would be no trial to establish liability.

Ideman listened Monday and Tuesday to arguments over the issue of liability.

The defendants--including General Electric, McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell International and other businesses that used the 22-acre toxic dump site in Riverside County from 1956 to 1972--say there should be a trial to establish liability.

Chemicals from nearly 32 million gallons of waste at Stringfellow have seeped into the ground beyond its borders near the town of Glen Avon, population 10,000.

The wastes consisted of acids, metals, solvents and pesticides, all with “harmful human health effects,” according to a report submitted to Congress in 1984 by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

‘Superfund’ Law

The Department of Justice in 1984 filed suit seeking to force the users and the owner of the closed toxic dump to shoulder the costs of cleaning it up. The suit was filed under the 1980 “Superfund” law, which sets rules for assessing liability in toxic cleanups.

Defendants have claimed the government’s position of strict liability, meaning all dumpers must pay for cleanup, is inequitable.

Defendants claimed in oral arguments and papers filed with Ideman that some pollutants may not have seeped outside the dump, and companies that dumped those chemicals should not be made to pay for the escaped waste of others.

But government and intervenor attorneys argued that the strict liability clause must be enforced because there is no scientific way to trace substances back to the original dumper.

“Technically, we’re not at a point where we can fingerprint and match up wastes with who deposited it, and somehow find them out,” said Frederic Woocher of the Center for Law in the Public Interest, an intervenor in the case.