Bid to Clean Up Toxic Dump in Escondido Mired by State Inaction

State to Act on Toxic Dump in Escondido

--Los Angeles Times, Jan. 24, 1984 Chatham dump moves up list, cleanup assured

--Escondido Times-Advocate, March 19, 1985 Chatham cleanup to begin

--Escondido Times-Advocate, July 10, 1986

Year in, year out, the headlines blare the optimistic predictions: Any day now, they promise, work crews will sweep in and seize the toxic time bomb ticking away beneath the soil of San Diego County’s nastiest hazardous waste dump.

Hold your breath, they urge, cleanup of the noxious brew of chemicals that have saturated the earth and poisoned the groundwater below is just around the corner.

The truth is, such confident pronouncements have turned out to be little more than empty promises.

It’s been almost six years since state health authorities first declared Bob and Tom Chatham’s old chemical recycling yard in Escondido a hazardous waste site. And it’s been nearly two years since they got the $2 million needed to clean it up.

Residents Want Action

Nevertheless, the most recent estimates suggest that it will be next fall at the earliest before the first shovelful of dirt is turned on the 5.6-acre property fronting Bernardo Avenue. After that, it could take a year or more to fully free the neighborhood of its toxic blight.

Residents who have clamored for action on the site since the early 1980s say they are losing patience, quick. They are tired of missed deadlines and delays, weary of pestering the experts about what this or that new round of testing may yield. They want action, and they want it now.

Angry and disillusioned, critics say the state’s handling of the Chatham site constitutes persuasive evidence that California’s toxic waste cleanup program is inefficient and slow. They cannot understand why a relatively small, manageable dump like the Chatham recycling yard has languished in bureaucratic purgatory for so long.

“It’s been one excuse after the other since the very beginning, and now I really question their sincerity in wanting to see this place cleaned up,” said Linda Partridge, who lives near the site and claims she suffered respiratory problems after exposure to fumes from the recycling operation. “They say they’re on schedule, but the schedule keeps changing and they keep moving the deadline back. . . . . At this point it just seems like foot-dragging.”

State health officials say they, too, are irritated by the lumbering process. If they had their druthers, the Chatham site would have been purged of its poisons long ago.

The trouble is, the cleanup is ensnared in a morass of complex regulations governing California’s hazardous waste management program. It simply takes time for a given site to inch its way over the plethora of administrative and legal hurdles that precede the actual removal of contaminants.

In addition, state officials say they still don’t know enough about the site to just charge in with a backhoe and haul the toxins away. Acting without a solid grasp of the facts might endanger worker and community safety and cause new problems that could delay the ultimate cleanup still longer, they say.

“We’re frustrated too,” said Jim Smith, a program supervisor for the state Department of Health Services’ toxics division. “But when you figure it took 30 years or more for the stuff to get there, you’ve got to realize it’s going to take a while to clean it up. It ain’t easy.”

Short on Staff

The problem is compounded by a dearth of staff on the state’s toxic substance control team. The program manager assigned to Chatham, for example, is handling four other projects of similar scope and also is responsible for two special department programs.

“There’s only so much I can do,” Chatham manager Megan Cambridge said recently, as she busily worked on an internal document that keeps her supervisors up to date on the status of the Escondido site.

Despite the irksome delays, state officials say the current health risks posed by the Chatham property appear to be minimal. One can breathe the air and apparently not get sick, and no contamination has yet been found in the groundwater beyond the site.

As a precaution, however, the property has been fenced off and posted with signs warning of chemical contamination. And residents with wells in the area have been advised not to tap the local aquifer.

Still, the full extent of contamination remains a mystery: “We feel confident that we know where it is, but we can’t say for sure where it isn’t, “ Smith said.

In addition, officials worry that finger-like fissures in the granite structure below the six-acre property may be carrying contaminated groundwater toward Felicita Creek, which feeds Lake Hodges, a drinking water supply.

Test borings in the surrounding area have shown no evidence of toxins in groundwater except directly below the site, but Smith said that may simply mean “we haven’t looked in the right places. In fact, we may never be able to characterize the extent of the groundwater contamination.”

Moreover, officials concede that the longer the toxins simmer in the soil and water below, the more difficult and costly the cleanup will be.

“That is definitely the risk you run in waiting,” Smith said. “It is certainly to our advantage to get that site cleaned up as fast as possible.”

When Linda Partridge purchased her home in a rural neighborhood on the southwestern edge of Escondido back in the mid-1970s, she gave hardly a thought to the brush-covered plot of land down the road. There was a curious little smokestack sticking up out of the weeds, but the real estate agent said it was just an old man with a funny hobby. “We didn’t think anything of it,” Partridge said.

The site looked innocuous enough. There was a small citrus grove on the property, and a pond fringed with reeds and teeming with frogs and polliwogs. It was a favorite frolicking spot for neighborhood kids.

But soon after moving in, the Partridges began noticing acrid odors wafting from the smokestack toward their home. It got so bad, that “we had to keep the windows closed around the clock,” Partridge recalled.

Then Partridge and one of her daughters began suffering from inflamed lungs and irritated eyes. Fatigue, difficulty breathing and a “strange metallic taste” also set in.

Partridge, who is a nurse, is convinced that the problems were caused by fumes from the Chatham yard. Doctors have not confirmed a connection, but Partridge says her daughter’s symptoms vanished when she left the area.

Chemicals Recycled

As it turns out, Robert and Thomas Chatham were operating a chemical distilling and reclamation business on the property, a family operation begun by their father before World War II. The men purchased barrels of industrial solvents and waste oil for about $3 apiece and cleansed them for reuse in an odd gizmo with the smokestack. The reclaimed chemicals were resold, and the residual material allegedly dumped.

About 380 barrels, some containing liquid, were initially found on the site; several pits three feet deep contained a gooey black substance. State officials say the Chathams also operated a hazardous waste transport company at one time.

When Partridge heard on the radio one day that the Chatham yard had been declared a toxic waste site, “I suddenly made the connection and realized why I’d been sick for so long,” she said. After being “brushed off” by county health officials whom she called with complaints about her health, Partridge formed ENACT--Escondido Neighbors Against Chemical Toxins--which remains the leading force lobbying for a cleanup today.

Meanwhile, in early 1982 the state moved in, closed down the Chathams’ business and declared the barrel-strewn yard a hazardous waste site. Thus began a saga that is still months away from a conclusion.

Early on, the fate of the Chatham property was unclear. Right off the bat, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency bowed out of the picture because it didn’t deem the case an emergency situation, removing the potential for federal money.

The property then bounded up and down the state’s Superfund list--a ranking that establishes which sites get funding first. Initially, the prospects of winning money for Escondido were poor. The state’s annual budget for toxic cleanups was a mere $10 million, and many larger, more seriously contaminated sites were ahead in line.

But in 1985, voters passed the $100-million Hazardous Substance Cleanup Bond Act, dramatically boosting the resources available for toxic site mitigation. Chatham, a relatively modest site that still was considered serious given its groundwater contamination and location amid homes, soon became a high priority in Southern California and received Superfund money.

Despite the availability of funds, residents say they have seen little or no progress at the site in recent years. Preliminary tests revealed the presence of industrial solvents, heavy metals and cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls--PCBs--in relatively high concentrations in the soil, and contaminants also were found in the groundwater.

More Samples Required

But state officials say still more sampling is needed before they have a firm grasp on how far contaminants may have drifted.

“They have tested and tested and retested and retested, but nothing ever happens,” said Margaret Herman, ENACT’s spokeswoman. “What are they doing?”

Currently, state officials say their consultants are characterizing the exact extent and nature of the contamination, a process called a “remedial investigation.” Next will come a feasibility study that breaks down the alternative approaches to cleanup--”everything from doing nothing, which is always an option, to incineration” of the chemically contaminated soil on site, said Cambridge, the project manager.

Both those documents are scheduled for completion in October, when officials will prepare a final plan recommending the best approach for cleanup. That document, subject to public hearings and review by other agencies, should be completed by July, 1988. Then, a specific blueprint for carrying out the cleanup will be drawn up. Actual work is scheduled to begin in August, 1988.

“It’s a slow process and we’d like it to move faster ourselves,” Smith said. “But all I can say is we plan to meet our schedule. It’s even possible that we’ll beat it.”

Linda Partridge and fellow members of ENACT say they long ago lost faith in such predictions. Once eager and hopeful, they are sage cynics today. Several issues, in particular, have eroded their confidence in the state:

- Worried that rain would wash the topsoil from the Chatham site and deposit contaminants on the roadway and in neighboring yards, ENACT in December requested that state officials place plastic sheeting over the property and construct berms along its border to contain the runoff.

It was not until the end of April--after the rainy season--that the state followed through on the idea. Meanwhile, PCBs had washed off the site into the front yard of a home across the street.

Diane Takvorian, executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition, a San Diego group active on toxics issues, recalls that she was shocked that state officials hadn’t thought up the mitigative measures themselves. She was even more disturbed that they waited five months to respond to the request.

“It seems to me this is the kind of preventive step they could have taken quickly and without a lot of trouble to minimize danger while they’re evaluating the cleanup,” Takvorian said.

Smith conceded that the department erred in failing to take precautions to prevent the escape of contaminants: “It should have been done immediately, and it wasn’t and we are to blame,” he said. “We had the money. The problem was the lack of a process indicating that such measures should have been taken.”

Smith said the episode has been “valuable” for the department and that “it won’t happen again.”

- Also controversial is a newsletter the state is publishing to keep residents near the site informed about the ongoing cleanup.

Both ENACT and the Environmental Health Coalition want the newsletter to list all contaminants that are present at the site--plus the medical problems that are possible after exposure. State health officials have balked at that idea, and the first issue of the newsletter made no mention of the medical consequences of chemical exposure.

“My own feeling is that to list medical effects when there is no indication of exposure is not a very good idea,” Smith said. “It scares people, it scares them unnecessarily . . . to let them know all these potential problems.”

Takvorian, however, wonders, “How are people going to find out this information if they don’t get it from their own health department?”

Earlier this month, the two community groups decided to end their participation in the state newsletter and publish their own fact sheet.

- Critics also chastise the state for so far failing to attempt to contact former residents of the area who may have been exposed to chemicals while the Chatham yard was operating before 1982. Takvorian said the state has “totally neglected this responsibility,” meaning that “folks out there could be suffering from a whole range of problems and have no idea what caused them.”

Smith said he does not believe the state is under any legal obligation to seek out such people, but that officials may conduct such a search if further research indicates there was “more widespread PCB contamination than it now appears there is.”

For sale: 3 - bedroom, 2 - bath home. Split-level, 13 years old, 3,359 square feet. Quiet, residential neighborhood. A steal at $199,500.

A few months back, Robert and Thomas Chatham contacted Help Yourself Real Estate and placed their parents’ former home--which overlooks the toxic waste site--on the market. Until the cleanup occurs, it may be a hard sell. And the brothers, who are out of the chemical recycling business but still live in the area, could use the money.

The estimated cost of the cleanup is $2.9 million, a figure likely to increase as work progresses. Although other parties--like generators of hazardous waste treated at the site and people who transported it there--may bear a portion of the burden, the bulk of the costs will fall to the Chathams.

According to their attorney, the brothers lack the means to cover the job. Perhaps their biggest asset is the site itself, which they reacquired last fall after selling the land to a real estate investment firm that went bankrupt. But because the land is tainted by contamination, banks are reluctant to accept it as collateral for a loan that might help the brothers fund the cleanup, said attorney David Mulliken.

“We are anxious to be cooperative and have been cooperative, but we simply do not have the liquid assets to unilaterally respond,” Mulliken said.

Consequently, the state likely will use its cost recovery program to pay for the cleanup. Under the system, the state would finance the work with money from the Superfund and then bill the family, tacking on a 10% surcharge for administrative costs.

Meanwhile, the state in February sued the Chathams, alleging violations of California’s hazardous waste laws. The brothers allegedly buried toxic waste during the spring of 1981 and made false statements to state health officials inquiring about their activities.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Tim Patterson said there is a maximum fine of $25,000 for each separate violation. In court documents, the plaintiffs denied the allegations.

Both Robert and Thomas Chatham declined to be interviewed by The Times. But Grace Chatham, Robert Chatham’s wife, said she looks forward to the day when all the fuss over the chemical recycling yard is just a foggy memory.

“This has been very, very difficult for us,” Mrs. Chatham said. “It’s been humiliating, degrading and embarrassing. My husband doesn’t believe he did anything wrong. There were no laws back then and he had all the permits he needed.”

In addition, Mrs. Chatham said she doubts there is “any real health risk because they’re certainly not hurrying the cleanup.” She added that none of the Chathams has ever felt any ill effects from the chemicals.

“We’ve had dogs and cows and sheep and horses right down in there with the recycling plant, and nothing ever happened to them,” she said. “I just think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion.”