El Segundo to Consider Hazardous Material Fee : Safety: The council is looking for ways to have industries that use toxic substances foot a bigger share of the cost of preparing for accidents.

Asked about the potential for hazardous materials accidents in his city, El Segundo fire official John Gilbert strode across one of his department’s conference rooms and pointed to an enlarged aerial photograph on the wall.

“Look at what you have here,” said Gilbert, a battalion chief in charge of training personnel. “We’re surrounded.”

There sat the city: neat rows of residences hemmed in by a vast industrial sprawl that includes the Chevron oil refinery, an Allied Signal chemical plant and aerospace manufacturing facilities for Hughes, Northrop and Rockwell International.

For fire officials such as Gilbert, El Segundo’s heavy concentration of chemically intensive industry means devoting a great deal of time and effort to prepare for and handle accidents involving hazardous materials.

And for city leaders, it means spending a great deal of tax money to subsidize that service--more than $2 million annually, according to a consultant’s study conducted for El Segundo this fall.

Faced with these costs, El Segundo officials are studying how to get businesses that use hazardous materials to foot a bigger share of the bill.

The effort, scheduled to begin formally in January when the City Council reviews municipal revenue sources, already has stirred concern among members of the El Segundo Chamber of Commerce.

But city leaders consider the creation of some type of new charge on hazardous materials users a logical move, especially since El Segundo is experiencing growing budget pressures.

“I think there’s a sufficient majority on the council to hold these people using hazardous materials responsible for these costs,” Councilman Scot D. Dannen said. Mayor Carl Jacobson explained: “We’re in a fiscal squeeze. . . . It just seems reasonable to give this a look.”

According to the El Segundo Fire Department, about 200 businesses in the city of 15,000 residents use hazardous materials. They range from small metal plating shops to the giant Chevron complex, the largest oil refinery in Southern California.

Predictably, there is no shortage of hazardous materials accidents.

Some are spectacular, like the November, 1989, fire and explosions at a Chevron crude oil processing unit that drew fire units from El Segundo and seven other South Bay stations. No injuries were reported, but an El Segundo Fire Department review of the incident said: “All the factors were in place for a disaster.”

In March, 1986, a chemical released accidentally from the Allied Signal plant, a refrigerant manufacturing facility, reacted with the morning fog to create a low cloud of hydrochloric acid fumes. More than 60 people were treated in local hospitals for problems including breathing difficulty, nausea, headaches and eye irritation.

Other accidents created less commotion, but still posed a serious threat. One was a fire and chemical spill this January at a Hughes plant in El Segundo that makes electronic circuit cards for satellite and radar systems.

An El Segundo police officer and three men working on the roof of a nearby building required treatment after the accident, which occurred in a storage shed behind the plant. It was a low price considering that the substance involved was nitric acid, a highly toxic chemical.

The spill forced the evacuation of several buildings and drew fire units from El Segundo and five other South Bay stations. “From what I know about it,” Gilbert said, “a good whiff of that stuff and you’re dead.”

Private fire units maintained by Hughes, Chevron and other large hazardous materials users in El Segundo do a great deal to control accidents, city officials point out. But still, the city often has to help.

According to city records, hazardous materials accidents account each year for more than 40 “medium” responses by the Fire Department and more than 20 “large” responses.

A large response involves all the department’s units--three engine companies, a ladder truck company and two paramedic units--and often support from other South Bay fire stations. A medium response involves two engine companies, one ladder truck company and one paramedic unit.

Although precise comparative figures were not available, several Los Angeles-area fire officials said that for a city its size, El Segundo has to contend with a disproportionate number of hazardous material accidents.

“El Segundo has to be one of the premier ones in the county,” said Don Upham, risk management coordinator for the Los Angeles County Fire Department. “They and Santa Fe Springs have a significant number of businesses that handle hazardous materials.”

The consultant’s study conducted this fall says El Segundo spends $2.35 million to prepare for and handle hazardous materials accidents and to comply with state-mandated programs requiring that hazardous materials be inventoried.

The city, in fact, does collect fees from the businesses that are inventoried and from businesses that have hazardous materials accidents requiring Fire Department attention. The income from those fees amounts to only about $100,000 annually, however, the study said.

Even subtracting this fee income, the Fire Department’s direct and indirect costs for activity in connection with hazardous materials still amount to more than $2 million, according to the report by David M. Griffith & Associates.

City officials think El Segundo should consider creating a hazardous materials taxing district or another type of hazardous materials charge to cover more--and possibly all--of these costs.

Fire officials in El Segundo and several other communities in the county say they have not heard of such a far-reaching hazardous materials cost-recovery program being implemented before.

“From what we understand we would be in the forefront,” said Gilbert, who has been studying the issue. “Nobody has tried to recoup both the direct and indirect costs from the recipients of the service.”

For now, business leaders say they are willing to discuss hazardous materials charges with the city--as long as the issue is not considered independently of the coming review of El Segundo’s revenue sources.

Still, the prospect of a new hazardous materials charge has caused concern. Chamber of Commerce President Karen Ackland says many hazardous materials users feel they already pay their share for fire protection through levies such as the business license tax, which provides 38% of the city’s general operating money.

“Our largest concern is that there might be some duplication,” Ackland said. “We had quite a hefty increase in (the business license tax) a few years ago. One presumed that part of that went to the Fire Department.”

Ackland says the chamber’s executive committee made that point to City Manager Ron Cano in a Dec. 12 meeting. Cano acknowledged that “they are a little bit concerned.”

But Cano and other city officials argue that existing revenue sources only cover basic fire protection--not the extra service made necessary by the abundant hazardous materials users in El Segundo.

“Compare us to Manhattan Beach or to Hawthorne,” Cano said. “We have a refinery and we have some of the largest corporations in the world that handle large quantities of acutely hazardous materials every day.”