State Held Liable for Stringfellow Toxic Dump Site

A federal court jury Friday found the state of California liable to share in the estimated $600-million cleanup of the Stringfellow acid pits, concluding that the state negligently oversaw construction of the toxic waste dump and then delayed taking action to rehabilitate the site.

The verdict, which marks the first time the state has been held liable for cleanup of a toxic dump, is likely to mean that taxpayers will bear a large portion of the cost of cleaning up the 23-year-old facility near Riverside, which is now believed to be leaking dangerous wastes toward a major source of drinking water for the Los Angeles basin.

In a separate ruling, a special master appointed to oversee the case also held California officials liable for cleanup under the federal Superfund law because the state is the current owner and operator of the site.

The two rulings dramatically underscored what has been a longstanding contention of companies that trucked their toxic industrial wastes to the Glen Avon site throughout the 1950s and 1960s: State officials chose Stringfellow as a hazardous waste site after only a cursory geological review, assured neighbors that it was safe, invited companies to bring in their wastes--and then attempted to hold them liable when the wastes began leaching into nearby water wells.

‘Unequivocal Success’

Lawyers for 14 aerospace and manufacturing companies that dumped at the site, who will also be required to pay some share of the cleanup costs, called the verdict “a complete, total, unequivocal success in every regard” and predicted that the state will now be required to pay most of the bill for reclaiming the dump.

“We won everything,” said Michael Kahn, the lead counsel for companies that dumped at the site. “We believe the implication of today’s ruling is the state will bear the lion’s share, if not all of” of the cleanup costs.

But state officials pointed to other portions of the jury’s verdict that held that the state was not negligent in choosing the site for the dump, or in investigating and designing the facility.

“Although the jury found the state liable on certain other theories, the attorney general’s office believes that the court’s refusal to instruct the jury on several statutory defenses was (in) error,” Deputy Atty. Gen. Don Robinson said in a prepared statement.

“It is the opinion of the attorney general’s office that these defenses would have barred any finding of liability against the state on the portion of the verdict that dealt with those theories.”

Robinson also said the court “failed to follow applicable case law” in its directed verdict holding the state liable under the federal Superfund statute, but state officials said they had not decided whether to appeal the verdicts.

The six-member jury’s verdict Friday was only an interim step in a litigation process that has already spanned six years and is likely to go on for many years more.

U.S. District Judge James M. Ideman has already held that the companies that began dumping wastes at Stringfellow in 1956 must share in the cleanup costs under the federal Superfund law, simply because they dumped at the site. However, that 1987 ruling did not find that any of the companies were legally at fault.

Thus, the jury’s finding that state officials were negligent in supervising construction and delaying cleanup activities could weigh heavily against the state when a final determination is made on how cleanup costs will be apportioned. Lawyers said it is possible that Ideman could ask Special Master Harry V. Peetris to conduct another jury trial to decide the apportionment issue.

Peetris several days earlier had secretly granted a motion holding the state liable for cleanup under the federal Superfund law, but his ruling was not disclosed publicly until the jury had returned. The jury’s verdict and the special master’s ruling have equal effect.

It was the state that had originally approached rock quarry owner James Stringfellow about opening a hazardous waste dump on his property to serve burgeoning industrial development throughout Southern California.

60-Minute Survey

A state-appointed geologist surveyed the site and concluded that it was underlain by impermeable granite bedrock that would provide a safe repository for toxic chemicals. However, the geologist later testified that he had been hired only to do “an overview” and had actually spent only about 45 to 60 minutes investigating the site.

In nearly two months of testimony, lawyers for the so-called “generator” companies also argued that state officials delayed doing anything to clean up the site for years after Stringfellow closed in 1972.

“For six years, the state fiddled,” attorney Barry Goode said. “They studied, they talked, they investigated . . . they did everything but clean up the site and effectively stop the spread of pollutants.”

Attorneys for the “generator” companies, including the Northrop Corp., McDonnell Douglas Co., Rockwell International Corp. and a variety of other aerospace and manufacturing firms, said that while a number of companies throughout the 1950s were illegally dumping their hazardous wastes along the highways and in the ocean, the companies that dumped at Stringfellow were attempting to comply with the law.

“Our companies were the good citizens,” Kahn said. “Our companies called up the government and said, ‘What should we do with our waste?’ And they said, ‘Send it to Stringfellow.’ ”

James Stringfellow, now 62, testified that he was forced to move out of Riverside, the city in which he had lived for most of his life, because he had been blamed for the foul wastes leaching out of his dump site. When his name was called for a seat at a restaurant, he said, other customers stared.

“It’s been 20 years, a long row to hoe,” he said of the verdict. “It’s the first time that anybody’s heard my story. . . . I’m delighted, and that’s all I can say.”

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this article.