City Won’t Seek Last-Minute Ban on Test Burn of Waste in La Jolla

Ogden Environmental Services’ planned test burn of hazardous waste moved closer to reality Friday when the city of San Diego and a community group decided not to seek restraining orders to halt the start-up of the controversial incinerator atop Torrey Pines Mesa.

City attorneys briefly contemplated a last-ditch effort to block the experiment, which is scheduled to begin Monday, but abandoned the plan because they lacked the time or any obvious reason for filing suit.

“In looking at it, we can’t see anything that can be done on this short notice,” said Assistant City Atty. Ronald Johnson. “We can’t find a basis for it on a real quick and dirty look.”

Review Over Weekend

Johnson said Mayor Maureen O’Connor, City Manager John Lockwood and City Atty. John Witt have emergency powers under provisions of the City Charter, but that they cannot be exercised to stop the test burn, which has been reviewed and approved by federal, state and local regulatory agencies.

Attorneys will continue reviewing the matter over the weekend, but now intend to brief the City Council on the experiment at the next scheduled council meeting, April 3, when the test burn will be over.

Ogden plans to burn 30 barrels of contaminated soil from the McColl waste dump in Fullerton over three to five days in an attempt to demonstrate the incinerator’s effectiveness in destroying 32 compounds, including 18 suspected carcinogens.

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the state Department of Health Services and the county Air Pollution Control District, which ruled Thursday, have deemed the test safe.

For years, opponents have worked to stop the burn because Ogden’s site in the GA Technologies Research Park is near UC San Diego, three hospitals, a child-care center, residential tracts, the Torrey Pines State Reserve and the Torrey Pines Inn.

A community group that has opposed Ogden’s plans for several years briefly considered going to court Friday after R. J. Sommerville, the county’s air-pollution control officer, and the county counsel’s office rejected a request to postpone the test burn to allow for an appeal.

Appeal Will Continue

But the group, the Environmental Health Coalition, decided not to undertake legal action. Its appeal to a five-member hearing board appointed by the county Board of Supervisors will continue, but will, in all likelihood, be heard after the burn is completed, said Diane Takvorian, the organization’s executive director.

“It looks as though the burn is going to happen,” Takvorian said. “The county counsel and Sommerville have refused to use the state statute in the way that it was intended, to have us have our appeal before the burn occurs.”

Barbara Baird, deputy county counsel, said Sommerville has no authority to stay the permit. “The only people who could even try to stay it is the courts,” she said.

David Mulliken, Ogden’s attorney, said the coalition’s leaders “consistently avoid battle in a neutral forum because they know they’re going to lose.” He said the coalition’s “strategy is to promote controversy in a political forum but avoid examination in a neutral forum.”

Ogden plans to begin heating up the incinerator Monday morning, but it probably will not reach the 1,425-degree temperature necessary to handle the waste until early Tuesday morning, said Joe Charest, a publicist for the company.

The coalition plans no protest at the site, in part because its leaders do not want to encourage anyone to be nearby during the burn.

“I would not encourage people to be there, nor would I stage a protest during the period that there will be burning going on,” Takvorian said.

A spokesman for the environmental group Greenpeace said it will consider during the weekend whether to stage a protest outside the GA Technologies facility.