Red Tape Slows Carson Toxic Waste Removal

County health officials told Carson four months ago to get rid of 16 drums of hazardous materials stored in a city yard. City officials say they want to dispose of the stuff, but there is a problem:

Their own regulations are preventing the cleanup, at least for now.

Last year, to enhance safety, the city began requiring that companies seeking to haul hazardous material obtain conditional use permits. But none of the 10 companies that have applied for such permits has completed the process.

City officials say they are faced with waiving the permit regulation or continuing to remain in violation of a citation from the Los Angeles County health department.

At the council meeting Monday, the matter provoked bitter argument among staff and council members, who said they learned of the drums and the health citation only last week.

The citation, issued Feb. 6, orders the city to remove 16 drums in a storage area at the Desford Street cul-de-sac east of Selwyn Avenue.

City officials said they don’t know how all the drums came to be on the site, or what’s in some of them, but they do not believe there is any immediate health hazard. The drums contain street surfacing material, oil and paint products and various unknown toxic materials, according to Howard Homan, the city’s director of parks and recreation.

Councilwoman Sylvia Muise angrily objected to a staff recommendation that Homan be put in charge of the disposal process. The city yard where the drums were found is shared by Homan’s department and the Department of Public Works.

Muise said she did not want the “person I hold responsible for this, who obviously doesn’t know anything about this” to be in charge of remedying the situation. “I ask the big question: Why did this happen?”

Homan countered that Muise “clearly doesn’t know the facts.”

Stored for Years

City crews found the waste material “in the streets,” took it to the yard and put it in the drums over a period of years, Homan said. “We can account for seven of the drums that came from our department. The other nine drums, we don’t know where they came from.”

Muise bristled at Homan’s response, saying she was amazed that “we are picking up . . . and we don’t even know the composition of what we are picking up.”

Mayor Pro Tem Vera Robles DeWitt asked, “Who is responsible for the yard?”

“I don’t know if anyone is really in charge of that yard,” Homan answered.

The argument flared again when Homan suggested that it was a formality that the county health citation named his department.

“I have a department head,” Muise said, “who says the only reason his name is on the report is because the citation was handed to him, which means, I guess, that he wants to back out of the responsibility.”

Council members finally decided that neither Homan nor Harold Williams, director of public works, should handle the disposal. The council assigned the job to Adolfo Reyes, acting director of community services, whose Community Development Department had nothing to do with the storage of the drums.

The permit requirement became an issue when the council discussed a staff recommendation that normal bidding procedures be waived in the interests of urgency. The staff said the city should award an $8,000 contract for disposal of the drums to Asbury Environmental Services, a firm recommended by county health officials.

When Muise questioned whether the firm had obtained a conditional use permit to haul hazardous materials, Reyes reported that Asbury had not even applied for a permit.

But no firm has yet obtained the special permit from the city, he said. Although 10 firms have applied for permission to haul hazardous materials last year, the city has not begun evaluating the environmental impact of their proposed hauling operations, he said.

Action Postponed

Action on the matter was postponed until June 8. Council members said they may then decide to waive the permit requirement in order to allow Asbury Environmental Services, which is licensed by the county to haul hazardous waste, to remove the drums.

The county citation required the city to provide county health officials by March 2 with proof that the legal disposal of the drums was arranged. Carson officials said the county is aware that the city is working on the problem.

Robert Millard, a city public works official who prepared a report on the issue for the council, said the matter had only reached his desk two weeks ago. He said he was uncertain why the procedure had taken so long.

Ken C. Smith, county health officer, said that it had taken several months to make chemical analysis of the contents of the drums. He said that the county is satisfied with the city’s progress so far, but expects the matter to be resolved in several weeks.