Date Scheduled for Test Burn of Tainted Soil

Ogden Environmental Services announced Thursday that it plans to burn contaminated soils from Fullerton’s McColl hazardous waste dump in its experimental incinerator atop Torrey Pines Mesa early next year.

The test burn of soil containing petroleum residues, tentatively scheduled to begin Jan. 30 and last for 30 hours over four days, is contingent on Ogden’s winning permission from three regulatory agencies.

Company and regulatory officials will be monitoring the incinerator’s ability to dispose of at least 34 compounds, including 11 suspected carcinogens, such as benzene, arsenic and chloroform, said Michael Lake, chief of engineering for the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District.

A successful test would allow Ogden to conduct more burning of the soils in a portable incinerator at the controversial site, which has been the subject of aborted cleanup efforts since the early 1980s.

Claims Won’t Harm Neighbors

A company official said the burn would have no effect on the environment or health of residents of one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, which includes the UC San Diego campus, three hospitals, a child-care center, residential tracts, the Torrey Pines Inn and the Torrey Pines State Reserve.

“We have demonstrated the operating conditions in trial burns and we will be operating within that envelope of conditions,” said Robert Wilbourn, Ogden’s director of operations. “We will do a risk assessment around that operation and verify that there will be no significant health and environmental impact.”

But environmental activist Sue Oxley, one of several community members who have fought for more than a year to stop the incinerator, again complained that Ogden should not be burning hazardous substances in a residential neighborhood.

“I’m very disturbed that they’re going ahead,” said Oxley, who lives about 2 miles from the incinerator, which is in GA Technologies Research Park on John J. Hopkins Drive. “The very reason that we complained about it all along is that they haven’t prepared an environmental impact report so they would be able to tell us what will happen with this test. So we’re all very uneasy about it.”

The state Department of Health Services and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency approved operation of the incinerator last year, ruling that the firm had demonstrated the technology’s safety and does not need to conduct an environmental impact review.

Late last year, the San Diego City Council denied Ogden a “conditional use permit” to fire up the incinerator but the decision was overturned in federal court in June. U. S. District Judge Judith Keep ruled that the city had effectively banned the project, a right it does not have, she said.

Ogden is developing the incinerator, capable of burning solvents, sludges and contaminated soils at temperatures reaching 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit, under strongly worded federal legislation encouraging innovative hazardous waste disposal technology.

The firm plans to burn 30 55-gallon drums of waste from McColl in next month’s demonstration. Regulatory agencies will then conduct a detailed analysis of the gases emitted from the incinerator’s smokestack and the ash left behind, Wilbourn said. The ash will be hauled away and dumped in an approved hazardous waste disposal site, he said.

Most of the contents of the drum will be soil, but that earth is contaminated with 24 organic compounds and 10 to 12 heavy metals left over from the days more than 40 years ago when McColl was a dumping ground for petroleum refinery waste.

In test burns conducted to win state and federal permits, Ogden demonstrated the incinerator’s ability to remove 99.99% of the hazardous material from soil samples, Wilbourn said. But activists, including the local Environmental Health Coalition, have never been satisfied with the results of the tests. The group filed a suit in November, 1987, but subsequently dropped it.

Nevertheless, Ogden must obtain permits to burn these specific materials from the state Health Department, the EPA and the county’s Air Pollution Control District.

“Until we’re satisfied that the burn will comply with all of our regulations and will present no significant adverse health effects to the community, we won’t be approving it,” said Lake of Air Pollution Control District.

Ogden has permits, obtained in 1981 and 1986, to burn coal and carbon refractory materials, but has no permission to burn the wastes from McColl, he said.

Ogden’s application for the permit was received about two weeks ago and is now being reviewed. Lake could not predict how long the “risk assessment” would take, but said that his agency is required to make a decision within six months.