FULLERTON : McColl Dump Plan Is Rejected by EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it will hold to its decision to rid the abandoned McColl dump of tons of toxic waste by burning it, despite a renewed call by a coalition of oil companies to entomb the hazardous compounds at the eight-acre site.

“Thermal destruction of the McColl waste is not a negotiable issue,” EPA spokesman Terry Wilson said. “Congress has mandated we find a permanent solution for hazardous dumps like McColl, and leaving waste in the ground is not a permanent solution.”

The oil companies--identified by federal officials as the parties most likely to have been responsible for the wastes--submitted a plan earlier this week to leave the refinery waste and oil-drilling muds in the ground and cap the site with a synthetic and clay cover. It is similar to a cleanup approach proposed three years ago by the oil companies, which organized under the name McColl Site Group.

In the latest proposal, the oil companies offered to pay for maintenance and security at the site and a long-term ground water monitoring program to determine if any toxic waste has reached underground water supplies about 250 feet below the dump. The plan also calls for stabilizing the earthen dump to help prevent it from rupturing during a major earthquake, said Bill Duchie, a spokesman for the oil companies.

“We believe the risk posed by the site is very low,” Duchie said. “But as long as the community and (EPA) feel something should be done, we believe this plan is the most comprehensive in terms of safety.”

But EPA’s Wilson said capping the World War II-era refinery wastes at the site, located a stone’s throw from neighborhoods of expensive, single-family foothill homes, is unacceptable. Wilson said the agency will continue testing various methods to excavate and destroy the toxic materials through incineration. A final decision on how to clean up the 150,000 tons of waste is not expected until March, 1991.

Wilson said the agency in February asked the McColl Site Group to submit a plan for monitoring the ground water for possible contamination after EPA officials discovered trace amounts of petroleum-based compounds in some test wells. (So far, no drinking water supplies have been affected.)

As part of the group’s response, Wilson said the companies resubmitted their original cleanup plan to contain the waste at the site, an option that would cost an estimated $20 million to $25 million and take three to five years to put in place.

On-site incineration, federal officials say, would cost about $117 million and take four to seven years to complete.

Officials of the five oil companies--Shell Oil Co., Phillips Petroleum, Texaco,, Arco and Unocal--say they will challenge any attempts to make them pay for on-site incineration. Federal officials acknowledged at a recent public hearing that the expected court fight over the cleanup costs could delay the actual start of cleanup up to 15 years.