State Wants $200,000 for Cleaning Up Toxic Spill

State officials will seek reimbursement of $200,000 from a paving company that refused to pay for cleaning up several thousand gallons of liquid asphalt that fouled two miles of a flood-control channel and threatened the Bolsa Chica wetlands last month.

Money to clean up the spill, one of the largest in Orange County, was pulled from a special state emergency fund because Seal Black Co. Inc. wouldn’t pick up the expense.

Officials from the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board said Tuesday that they plan to ask the state attorney general’s office to seek the money and perhaps levy fines.

“At the very least, we want our $200,000 back,” said Bruce Paine, an associate engineer who coordinated the cleanup for the water board.

About 8,000 gallons of the brown, oily muck flowed from vandalized asphalt tanks at the company July 26. Several thousand gallons coated parts of the East Garden Grove-Winterburg Flood Control Channel that empties into the Bolsa Chica wetlands, but county workers installed earthen dams before the material flowed into the fragile bird sanctuary, which was three miles downstream.

The two-week cleanup ended last Thursday, although a three-foot-high dike remains in place to catch any residue.

Water quality officials said they can’t recall any other Orange County company refusing to accept the financial responsibility for a major toxic spill.

“I’ve seen this happen before, but never on this scale,” said Chris Crompton, supervisor of the water pollution section of the Orange County Environmental Management Agency. “This was quite a large spill.”

The state’s water-pollution cleanup fund, established 20 years ago, has been used only once before in Orange County, Paine said. In that case, about a decade ago, the polluter wasn’t immediately apparent, and the company paid as soon as it was identified as the source.

“The board prefers to spend this money only when no one else is around to pay. But this was an emergency,” said Jennifer Soloway, a staff attorney with the State Water Resources Control Board, which oversees the fund.

“If they didn’t clean up the spill right away, you would have had a really bad environmental problem.”

The county also kicked in $50,000, but Crompton said the county EMA has not yet decided whether to ask county counsel or the district attorney’s office to seek reimbursement.

William Green, co-owner of Seal Black Co., said Tuesday that he was unaware that the water board plans to seek reimbursement.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it, and we need to mull it over and talk to our attorneys,” he said. “We don’t know where we stand (with the insurance company). This was a situation where vandals came in and opened the valves on the tank.”

Seal Black Co. paid an initial $25,000 but then refused to pay the rest because its insurance apparently wouldn’t cover it, according to Green. When the spill occurred, Green said, he was worried that the cleanup would bankrupt his company. The company, a family-run business in Orange County for about 30 years, has annual sales of about $2.5 million, he said.

Green said the asphalt was unleashed by a vandal who opened valves on five large storage tanks. No suspect has been found.

State law says that a company that releases a chemical into a state waterway must pay for the cleanup regardless of who was at fault.

“The discharge came from their property. We don’t have to prove negligence. That’s what the statute says,” said Soloway, of the State Water Resources Control Board.

The state fund, which contains $7 million, comes from fines paid by industries that violated water pollution laws.

The state money is used from 10 to 12 times a year, but usually for non-emergency, longstanding pollution cases when a responsible party cannot be found or the company is bankrupt or defunct, Soloway said.

Most large spills, she said, come from an industry, usually an oil company, that can afford the cleanup or has major pollution insurance.

Environmental damage was kept to a minimum in the asphalt spill because the channel was diked with sand and dirt. Crayfish in the channel died, but the downstream wetlands, home to waterfowl and endangered birds, were spared.

Contractors hired by the state vacuumed the material from the channel and power-washed it with detergents. Crompton said some sheen remains, but tests show it should have minimal impact. The sandbag dam will remain in place as long as necessary to protect the wetlands.