Every Day Is Earth Day for Specialist in Toxic Cleanup

While other environmentalists are picking up trash, planting trees or demonstrating for clean air during Earth Day observances on Sunday, Paula Batarseh hopes to be relaxing at the beach.

That’s because weekdays are Earth Days for Batarseh, 24, who is in charge of cleaning up two potentially dangerous toxic chemical spills that have troubled Los Angeles-area officials for years.

Batarseh is a hazardous materials specialist for the state’s Department of Health Services whose work will determine whether ground water becomes contaminated in arid Canyon Country 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles and whether dozens of families will have to abandon their homes in Oxnard.

In Canyon Country, she has kicked the owner of an oil recycling plant off his property until she finishes analyzing hundreds of barrels of oils, acids and sludge that she has gathered from his 32-year-old petroleum processing site.

In Oxnard, she is carefully testing for contamination from an abandoned oil sump beneath a 99-lot subdivision. She is using equipment that is so sensitive that it once detected whiffs of natural gas leaking from a homeowner’s defective clothes dryer.

In her job, Batarseh needs special gear to protect her against dangerous chemicals--and a thick skin to deflect strong criticism she occasionally receives from hostile property owners.

She wears a plastic jumpsuit over her designer jeans as she collects samples from chemical tanks at the Lubrication Co. of America recycling plant off Soledad Canyon Road.

A gas mask hides her face when she walks near open drums of oils and acids. She wears a hard hat when she ventures close to towers filled with chemicals at the five-acre site.

Batarseh’s heavy rubber boots leave few tracks in the dirt around the 119 chemical storage tanks, however. That’s because dust has been matted down by oil that has spilled from valves and pipes.

“The first thing you want to do at night when you get home is take a nice, hot shower,” she said. “You feel as if you’ve been camping out for seven days without a bath.”

Batarseh ends the day by curling up with a book at her home in Mission Hills. This week it’s “Alternative Techniques for Treatment of Hazardous Wastes,” a volume she finds particularly engrossing.

“It can keep me up all night,” she said.

State officials say Batarseh is the youngest woman they have put in charge of such a multimillion-dollar toxic cleanup project.

“On the surface, she looks quiet and soft-spoken,” said Steve Lavinger, who heads the state’s hazardous waste removal program for Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. “But on the other hand, she stands pretty firm on issues when work has to be done a certain way.”

Although there is daily potential for danger in her work, Batarseh said she doesn’t consider it as risky as her last job.

That was at the Rancho Seco nuclear generating station near Sacramento, where her assignment involved “investigating and resolving nonconformance occurences” at the atomic plant.

“She knows what to wear and what to touch,” said her husband, John. “She’s very health-conscious. She’s very careful.”

Her husband’s job is more dangerous, Batarseh said. “He owns a liquor store.”

A Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem, Batarseh said she became hooked on environmental work while studying chemical engineering in college in Canada. She had joined an asbestos-removal project because it was the only summer job available to students, she said.

“I find it’s really interesting to go out there and see what a real mess our environment is in,” she said. “It feels good doing this kind of work.”

State health officials have assigned Batarseh to determine how much work is needed at the Canyon Country and Oxnard sites and then to oversee cleanup work by private contractors. The final combined cost of the projects is expected to be in the millions.

At the recycling plant off Soledad Canyon Road, workers are removing rows of oversized steel barrels that enclose leaky or rusting 55-gallon drums of chemicals that Batarseh decided were too risky to move by themselves.

Tests have indicated that some of the chemicals contain PCBs, heat-resistant compounds that once were used in hydraulic fluids and electrical cooling oils. Now banned, PCBs are a suspected cause of cancer.

Before she is finished, Batarseh will have sent 229 chemical barrels to a hazardous waste landfill near the San Joaquin Valley town of Kettleman City.

Batarseh figures her crews will be at work at the site all summer. That’s bad news for recycling plant operator Grant Ivey, who has closed the plant and wants to sell the land.

The land is on the market for $6.7 million, although potential buyers will not be allowed in to inspect all of it until the cleanup is finished.

As part of an agreement with state health officials, Ivey will pay cleanup costs of up to $1.4 million from profits from any future sale. Costs above that will be covered by state toxic waste cleanup bond money.

A angry Ivey contends that he could have cleaned up the site himself for $495,000. He said the amount of spilled oil is small and is less harmful than the residue found on supermarket parking lots across Los Angeles.

“By the time they get through, they’ll have spent $3 million or $4 million,” Ivey predicted. “It’s overkill.”

Batarseh disputes Ivey’s claim, although she said the eventual cleanup costs could go far beyond the anticipated $1.4 million.

Batarseh has also fielded criticism from Oxnard property owners who complain that the oil cleanup in their neighborhood is moving too slowly.

Residents of a 99-lot subdivision a few blocks from the beach in the Oxnard Dunes area have known since 1985 that they live atop a long-buried oil sump.

That’s the year that a builder struck oil--or at least a gooey substance that smelled like gasoline--when he dug a hole to start work on a new home. Since then, a moratorium on new construction has been in effect.

Geologists have probed soil samples taken from several lots in the subdivision. Earlier this month, Batarseh and other workers used special air sniffers to check for signs that gas is leaking from the sand into houses.

“We should come to our conclusions about the risk to residents by the end of May,” said Batarseh, adding that the project has been slowed by funding delays.

“Everyone is waiting for our decision,” she said. “They feel their hands are tied. People are very upset when they call me.”