State Orders Big Oil Firms to Clean Carson Landfill

State health officials have named Shell, Unocal, Chevron, Arco, Mobil, Continental Oil, BKK Corp. and other firms in an order mandating that they pay for cleaning up the Cal Compact landfill site in Carson.

Costs to clean up an estimated 1.2 million barrels of liquid hazardous waste soaking the subsurface soil of the 180-acre site could run into the “tens of millions” of dollars, John E. Scandura, a state Toxic Substances Control Division official, said Tuesday.

Scandura added that the project, one of 68 targeted locally by state officials, would be one of the largest cleanup operations in Southern California.

The site--a hilly grass-covered area now used only by joy-riding motorcyclists--is a prime development location southeast of the intersection of the San Diego and Harbor freeways. It began attracting developers shortly after Cal Compact Inc. closed it as a dump.

Checkered Past

The property, now the subject of bankruptcy proceedings, has had a tangled history. At different times, it has been proposed as a stadium site for the Rams and Raiders; been involved in a scheme by convicted political corrupter W. Patrick Moriarty as the location of a mobile home park and been proposed as a site for a hotel and office buildings.

But before anything can be built on the land, state health officials insist that it be cleaned up. One of the first steps of the cleanup process is to determine just what was dumped there during its almost 10 years as a landfill.

Records indicate that hazardous wastes dumped at the site include oil drilling mud, waste paint, oil tank bottom sludge, solvents and waste oil, as well as about 6 million cubic yards of less troublesome waste.

Although new tests will be required, a 1981 Carson report, incorporated into the cleanup order, described a witch’s brew of noxious chemicals seeping into the ground beneath the site:

Foul-Smelling Gas

Thirty feet down, hot spots produced by bacterial decay are steaming at 112 degrees. Methane, a foul-smelling gas produced by decomposition of organic matter, permeates the ground at 10 times the concentration needed for an explosion. Lead, chromium and other metals taint ground water 50 to 70 feet below the surface at levels that exceed the state standards for drinking water. Concentrations of benzene, chloroform and a host of other hydrocarbons also exceed state safety levels.

Scandura said the contaminated water, now found at shallow depths not used for drinking water, threatens the deeper Silverado Aquifer, which does provide drinking water for South Bay communities.

Under state law, even though the dumping was legal at the time, the dumpers are going to have to pay to clean up.

Most company spokesmen contacted Tuesday said they had not had time to respond in detail to the order.

However, Ron Gastelum, general counsel for BKK Corp. of Torrance, promised cooperation but added: “Don’t ask us to sign a blank check. To the best of our knowledge, (the dump) operated with all permits and does not present a real threat to the health or environment.”

He added that cleaning up the Cal Compact site might take away funds needed to handle more urgent water contamination problems in the San Gabriel Valley. (BKK is a successor firm to Cal Compact Inc., which ran the dump from 1959 until sometime between 1965 and 1968.)

A spokesman for Chevron Corp. said the company would cooperate “if there is a problem in the community. . . . We would not shirk our duties.”

In addition to the major oil companies and BKK Corp., the order names Signal Oil Co., Buttram Oil Co., Long Beach Oil Development Co., Del Amo Gardens Inc., Deutsch Co. and World Industrial Center Ltd. In addition to the companies named in the order, about 500 other firms have some responsibility for dumping at the site, according to Scandura.

The companies have until May 2 to submit a plan for a feasibility study of clean-up alternatives.

Very little of the oil industry wastes dumped at the Cal Compact site when it was active would be handled the same way today, Scandura said. Now they are recycled, treated on the site, spread over dirt where bacterial action reduces dangerous hydrocarbons to less problematic compounds, or trucked to landfills designated for hazardous waste, he said.

“Back in those days, the laws and regulations governing the treatment of hazardous materials, the whole gamut of handling hazardous waste was very loose and lax,” Scandura said.

“No one had a grasp as to how dangerous it was. Now we realize how dangerous this is. The former disposal sites are posing a threat to health and the environment.”