Efforts to Halt Toxic Leaks From Storage Tanks Lagging

Local and state agencies have known for several years that dozens of underground storage tanks have leaked hazardous solvents and fuel into the ground water of the San Fernando Valley, which supplies 15% of Los Angeles’ drinking water.

But despite recent state legislation and local ordinances designed to find leaking tanks--some buried for decades beneath gas stations and other businesses--officials say efforts to clean up these and other sites in Los Angeles are paralyzed.

A lack of financing and manpower and a steadily rising number of contaminated sites have combined to overwhelm the 3-year-old program, officials say. The problem has worsened as state and local officials have grappled over which agencies should oversee which contaminated sites.

“The tanks are like a volleyball,” said Hank Yacoub, supervising engineer for the toxics section of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the local arm of the state agency that has overall responsibility for protecting ground water.

In a report scheduled to be presented today at a meeting of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board--a copy of which was obtained by The Times--the board’s toxics section has written that “only about 40% of the underground tank workload is being handled.”

Backlog of More Than 100 Leaking Tanks

The report, prepared by Yacoub, says there is a backlog of more than 100 cases where tanks are known to be leaking but have not yet been reviewed.

Yacoub’s office now lists 425 sites in its domain--Los Angeles and Ventura counties--where leaks have been found. In more than half these cases, fuel or industrial chemicals have not only entered the soil, but have reached underlying ground water.

With seven engineers to oversee investigations and cleanups, “the workload is supersaturated,” Yacoub said. And about 10 new cases of ground-water contamination are added to the list each month as new leaks are detected by local agencies, according to Yacoub’s report.

As a result, Yacoub is proposing that the toxics section shelve more than 200 of its cases. These would be the less serious cases--where only soil has been tainted or where ground-water contamination is minor. “Under the new priority system,” according to the report, “these cases would receive little or no attention.”

Even though Yacoub acknowledged that county and city agencies are equally short-handed, many of these 200 cases would have to be handled at the local level, Yacoub said. This would reverse a trend in which local agencies had been referring an increasing number of tank leaks to the state, he said.

The board has little choice, Yacoub said, noting that its staff would be fully occupied with the long list of serious cases: where solvents, industrial chemicals, or large amounts of fuel are in soil and water.

1984 Laws Targeted Underground Tanks

The problems have developed in the wake of a series of state laws and local ordinances enacted in 1984 that were the first attempt in California to deal with underground storage tanks.

Two state laws were passed that required local governments to take an inventory of underground tanks, to issue permits, and to inspect the tanks for leaks. Under the law, cities could retain local control over underground tank inspections if they passed ordinances that were at least as stringent as the state law. Alternatively, the cities could opt to have county agencies handle the task.

Leaks and spills from such tanks over the past 40 years or more are suspected of constituting a major source of the contaminants that have tainted nearly half of the drinking-water wells in the San Fernando Valley and others in the San Gabriel Valley and parts of Northern California. Until those bills were passed, there was little state regulation of underground tanks.

Of the estimated 170,000 underground tanks in California, more than a third--or 60,000--are located in the area controlled by Yacoub’s office.

The underground-tank program outlined in the state legislation is designed to work in stages, with the city or county agencies doing initial inspections, issuing permits, overseeing tests for contamination and requiring the installation of leak-detection systems to prevent future leaks, Yacoub said.

If tests of the soil beneath a tank turn up signs of a bad leak, wells must be dug to check the condition of underlying ground water. If the water is found to be contaminated, then the case is turned over to the state water officials, Yacoub said.

But in many cases, he said, understaffed local agencies are referring contamination cases not only of water but of soil to the regional board, thus contributing to its backlog.

Lack of Staff and Money

Yacoub complained that the City of Los Angeles, which has given responsibility for tank inspections to the Fire Department, and many other local governments have not backed up ordinances on tanks with expanded staffing and budgets.

“If you pass an ordinance, then you should deliver,” Yacoub said. “If not, get out and turn it back over to the county.” Already, the cities of Glendale, South Gate, Gardena and Walnut--which had passed ordinances taking control of tank inspections--have rescinded them, he said.

“The only local agency doing what I consider effective and efficient work is the Ventura County Department of Health Services,” he said. The Ventura health department is the only local agency to have signed an agreement with the Los Angeles regional board outlining a protocol to determine which cases will be handled locally and which will be turned over to the state board.

In all other cases, no guidelines yet exist to indicate when a leak is bad enough to justify turning a case over to the state, Yacoub said.

The list of tank leaks being monitored by the regional board takes up dozens of pages of computer printout, with 11 cases a page.

Many of the most serious cases are in the San Fernando Valley, which is especially important to the regional board because ground water in layers of sediment beneath the eastern Valley supplies 15% of Los Angeles’ drinking water, Yacoub said. The sandy sediment is also unusually porous, allowing any contaminant to quickly sink toward the water, Yacoub said.

Even before the state tank laws were passed, the regional board in 1983 had begun a survey of 88 Valley firms that it predicted were most likely to have leaking tanks. Sure enough, according to regional board figures, contaminated soil or ground water was found at 49 of the firms.

At Riker Laboratories, a drug manufacturer in North Hollywood, high levels of chloroform, methylene chloride and other chemicals were found in ground water.

Tests of soil and water beneath MCA-Universal Studios on Lankershim Boulevard revealed high concentrations of solvents and leaked fuel. A block from the Universal Studios site is Technicolor Inc., where tests have detected high levels of two hazardous solvents in the water.

Complex Job

The complexity of the task facing the state and local cleanup agencies is evident at the Rocketdyne aerospace plant in Canoga Park, where a major cleanup of leaked solvents--involving the installation of more than four dozen wells--is under way.

Rocketdyne engineers have reported to the regional water board that samples taken from wells along the plant’s southern and western flanks showed that gasoline was seeping through the earth beneath the plant. But the gasoline was seeping from two locations outside Rocketdyne property, said Larry Peterson, an engineer with the regional board.

The suspected sources of the fuel, a car rental company and another small firm, have not yet been inspected, he said.

The workload for a single serious case can be daunting. One of the most extensive studies of contamination possibly caused by leaking tanks is scheduled to be turned in to the toxics section April 30 by Lockheed-California Co. of Burbank.

Toxic solvents were detected in ground water beneath several Lockheed buildings in 1985. A six-inch-thick file of data from tests on samples drawn from 12 wells dug around Lockheed’s many plants has already been turned in, with about 500 additional pages of data and analysis expected by the end of April, said Albert Novak, the regional-board engineer handling the Lockheed case.

In the Valley, there are also 29 gas stations where tank leaks have been detected. At just over half of those, sampling wells have detected a layer of gasoline floating on the underground water, according to the regional board’s report.

Efforts to assess the extent of leaks and to figure out a scheme for removing contaminated water or soil are often complex, requiring detailed analysis and the drilling of water-extraction wells, all paid for by the property owner.

A typically complicated situation has developed at the corner of Canoga Avenue and Saticoy Street, where two gas stations on opposite corners both have tanks that have leaked copious amounts of gasoline into the ground water, said David Bacharowski, an environmental specialist with the regional board.

Test wells have shown that gasoline from the station on the southwest corner, owned by Chevron, is flowing eastward beneath Saticoy onto the property of an Exxon station. Fuel from the Exxon station is drifting beneath property owned by a bank.

Another tricky case popped up unexpectedly in 1985 on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, where Gross Enterprises was building a five-story office building.

While excavating the site for an underground parking lot, the company had to install pumps and shallow wells to keep ground water from invading the construction site. Unknown to anyone, a nearby Mobil station had a leaking underground tank. The fuel was pooling in the earth on top of the ground-water layer. The pumps at the construction site “just sucked the free gasoline right in,” Bacharowski said.

Gross Enterprises has since been required to install a sophisticated water purification system to clean up the ground water.

Additional Delays

Adding to delays caused by the backlog of cases are delays produced by companies that have been slow to start cleaning up, Bacharowski said. A Northridge firm that rents construction equipment, for example, has missed by eight months its deadline for filing a report assessing the extent of water contamination from leaking fuel tanks.

“We’re going to send them and some others one last warning letter,” Bacharowski said. After that, any delinquent firms will be levied administrative penalties of up to $1,000 a day.

Even at stations where the fuel has not hit ground water, a large cleanup operation may be required, Bacharowski said. At World Oil Station No. 12, on West Olive Avenue in Burbank, more than 13,000 gallons of fuel are estimated to have seeped into the earth. There, the county Department of Public Works is overseeing a pilot project to try to decontaminate hundreds of cubic yards of gasoline-soaked soil on the site, so that it need not be trucked as a hazardous waste to a licensed landfill.

City and county agencies responsible for the first step in the tank program--issuing of permits and the first round of tests for leaks--are complaining that they have the same problems the state board has: not enough manpower or money.

The county Department of Public Works handles tank inspections for unincorporated areas in Los Angeles County and cities that chose not to pass their own ordinances. In the last two years, the cities of Glendale, Gardena, South Gate, and, most recently, Walnut, in the San Gabriel Valley, all rescinded hastily passed local tank ordinances, turning over responsibility for the underground tanks to the county. The caseload is rising steadily, said Carl Sjoberg, director of the county tanks program.

“We probably refer fewer cases to the state than the other local agencies,” Sjoberg said. “But there is a limit to what we can do. The problem is, how do you pay for it?”

Sjoberg said the state is not providing any funds to local agencies, which are expected to pay for their programs through fees for permits. “The fees we collect on permits for removing a tank or certifying a new tank do not come anywhere near covering the actual cost to the county,” he said.

He and several other local officials blamed Gov. George Deukmejian for consistently vetoing measures that would increase funds for underground-tank cleanups.

“We can pretty much manage the inspections and the paper work,” he said. “But the minute you get involved in a hairy cleanup, it blows you out the window.”

The Los Angeles Fire Department, in charge of permits and inspections for all the tanks in the city, is “absolutely overloaded at this point,” said Capt. Jonathan Hall, who directs the tank-inspection program.

To comply with the state law but keep control of tank permits and cleanups at the local level, the City of Los Angeles passed its own underground-tank ordinance, which went into effect on the first day of 1984.

The city Fire Department was given the responsibility of conducting tank inspections, issuing permits, overseeing leak checks and soil tests, Hall said.

Permits Required

A permit is required for installation of any new tank, any change in an old tank or removal of an old tank. Soil beneath existing tanks must be tested for any sign of fuel or chemicals. “If it’s clean, there’s no further action,” Hall said. “If it’s dirty, we ask for a site assessment.” This step includes the drilling of wells to test how deep contaminants may have sunk and tests to detect vapors in the soil from fuel or solvents.

At that stage, if there is evidence that ground water has been contaminated, the case is turned over to the state.

The Fire Department has estimated that there are between 11,000 and 20,000 underground tanks in the city, said Chief James Young, head of the Bureau of Fire Prevention. About 20% of those--or at least 2,200 tanks--are believed to be leaking, he said. And the figure is probably higher, he said.

With no computer system, inspection reports and permit information are filed on paper, Hall said. No additional staff has been provided to oversee the tank program. The result: Since the program began in 1984, the department has discovered only 166 leaking tanks, which means that hundreds more are waiting to be found.

Young recently presented a plan to the Board of Fire Commissioners to include in the Fire Department’s budget a specialized underground-tank unit. This 10-person team would be responsible for inspecting plans for tanks, issuing permits and overseeing any monitoring or investigation of incidents of soil contamination from leaking tanks.

With such a unit, every tank in the city could be leak-free and certified within three years, Young predicted. The plan would have to pass through many hoops, including getting the OK of the mayor and the City Council before the unit can be financed, Young said.

The existing program is making some progress, Hall said. The major oil companies are being very cooperative in cleaning up leaks at gas stations, he said. “One company has estimated that it will take between $7 million and $20 million to bring 200 stations into compliance,” Hall said. The firms are willing to spend this much because they might otherwise face the prospect of lawsuits and civil liability years down the line, he said.

Small Businesses

More daunting is the challenge of bringing dozens of “mom-and-pop” firms, including dry cleaners, independent gas stations and small plating operations, into compliance, he said.

The program has been hampered by a lack of funds for public education programs, Hall said. The result is that many small businesses with underground tanks have failed to apply for permits or to install new tanks or equipment to detect leaks. “Right now, the independent businessman is just scared to death,” Hall said. “They’ve got to realize that the new technology isn’t going to put them out of business.”

He said that businesses that fail to install leak-detection systems or better tanks are the ones who would face hard times if a leak occurred and they had to foot the bill for expensive studies, well-drilling, and cleanup. “When they become aware of the potential liability, they’re going to jump,” he said.