FULLERTON : Residents Frustrated by McColl Site Plan

As a new neighbor of the former McColl toxic waste dump, John Law attended his first McColl community meeting this week and listened to residents discussing possible solutions.

He left the late Thursday night meeting frustrated, he said, that both the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the oil companies responsible for McColl seem to have diverse agendas for dealing with it, and neither of those agendas seems to be in the community’s best interest.

“I’m really disturbed by this meeting,” Law, 32, said after a representative of five oil companies showed color slides demonstrating their proposed solution to seal off the estimated 150,000 tons of waste at McColl.

“On one side, you have big government and on the other side you have the (oil companies) putting on a dog-and-pony show,” he said.

The 2 1/2-hour meeting, called by a small group of residents living just behind the former dump site, was to allow the oil companies to show their proposal to seal the McColl wastes beneath layers of natural and artificial materials and monitor the site far into the future.

The oil companies--Shell, Unocal, Arco, Texaco and Phillips-- have been trying to increase community support for their plan, which the EPA calls inadequate.

“EPA is mandated by Congress to come up with permanent solutions,” spokesman Terry Wilson said. “The proposal the oil companies have at this time is not a permanent solution.”

Although the aim of the meeting was to help residents reach a consensus, about 70 area residents left still frustrated with the oil companies and with federal officials over the lack of a solution to clean up the World War II-era refinery waste dump.

Besides residents, also attending were representatives from the oil companies, the EPA, the city of Fullerton and representatives of local elected officials.

After studying McColl for several years, the EPA expects to announce its preferred cleanup method next March. The EPA holds the oil companies as potentially responsible for cleaning up McColl, because the toxic contamination is from refinery wastes dumped--legally--during the 1940s. The oil companies, however, have balked at paying the cleanup costs, estimated to cost at least $117 million.