Toxic Time Bomb

It has been seven years since the solvent-recycling business operated by Robert and Thomas Chatham in Escondido was declared a hazardous waste site.

It has been four years since the voters of California approved $100 million in bonds to start cleanup on 50 of the 323 such sites around the state, of which Chatham Brothers is one of the 20 most serious.

It has been 2 1/2 years since state toxic cleanup crews started the preliminary work to determine how much contamination there was, how far it had spread and how best to clean it up. At that time, state officials estimated that the preliminary work would take about three months.

Yet today that preliminary work is still going on, and the state’s most optimistic projections are that removal of the drums of waste and contaminated soil won’t start until late this year. And that is contingent on federal approval to dump the waste at a landfill, which was restricted in November.

If that approval is not granted, when Chatham will be cleaned up is anyone’s guess, because there is not enough of the $100 million left for the more expensive incineration of the wastes.

Some of this lengthy delay is a necessary part of cleaning up highly toxic substances such as heavy metals and cancer-causing PCBs, which must be done with great care to avoid harming nearby residents or cleanup crews.

But we think that Escondido residents, the Escondido City Council and the county have good reason to criticize the delays and to question the efficiency of state procedures.

By its own admissions, the state Department of Health Services has stumbled several times and been tripped up by internal problems and changes in personnel and strategy.

For instance, one of the reasons that the preliminary studies are still not completed is because the decision to test the extent of ground-water contamination was not made until late in the process. Meanwhile, every day that the gooey wastes sit in the soil, the chances of ground-water contamination increase.

The time has come to cut through the bureaucratic delays and find a way to clean up the Chatham Brothers site. The Escondido City Council and the county have some good ideas.

Councilwoman Carla DeDominicis’ proposal that the city take on the cleanup task might be too ambitious, but the council’s decision to prod federal and state officials to look at alternative ways to clean up the site might provide the kind of leadership that the state has failed to show.