Not Missing Old Neighborhood

Slightly more than two years ago, John and Melissa Burns decided to sell the one-story house on Allen Street where they and their children had lived since 1985. The housing market was still viable, and the Burnses were looking for a larger home that would more comfortably accommodate the twins lately added to their family.

Plus, there was the matter of “the sludge.”

For as long as the Burnses and others in the 30-year-old housing tract can remember, each summer and winter brings a familiar but unwelcome visitor to the neighborhood--a black, tarlike sludge that oozes to the surface from underground and then settles in their back yards, sometimes creeping into their swimming pools.

State health officials have acknowledged that the sludge comes from a former toxic waste dump used by oil refinery companies from the 1930s until 1958, when a developer bought the land just east of the San Diego Freeway.

And the Burnses’ house was practically on top of it.

“We found out we were sitting on toxic sludge,” Melissa Burns, 34, said. “Since we had children, and it was the right time with the real estate market, it was like, ‘This is the time to get out of here.’ I’m amazed that other people stayed.”

She and her husband didn’t. They secured a buyer, then moved in 1989 to a bigger house 2 miles down the road--still in Westminster but far enough away from the sludge.

The state Department of Health Services had determined in 1987 that the sludge contained benzene, a carcinogen, and toluene, which can affect the nervous system. Since then, the department has done some spot cleanups on request--sludge from one back yard alone filled eleven 55-gallon drums--but officials are hoping to have the site placed on the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund list for a comprehensive cleanup.

Melissa Burns decided not to wait. “With everything we were finding out, it would have been crazy” to stay, she said.

“I ran a day-care (center) in my home. My fear always was, if one of the kids comes back with a problem 10 years later, I’ll be the one liable,” she said.

The Department of Health Services is expected to release a detailed health risk assessment sometime next month. However, officials have said that although the sludge is toxic, it does not pose a major health hazard, despite complaints of nausea and dizziness by some residents.

“It would be hazardous if you were exposed to it for a long period of time. But if you walked by and picked it up for a few minutes, there wouldn’t be a problem,” said Allan Hirsch, spokesman of the Department of Health Services Toxic Substance Control Program office in Long Beach.

But, Hirsch added, “if kids were to play in it and get it all over their skin, that would not be good.”

Which was precisely what Melissa Burns was concerned about.

“They told me that as long as the kids don’t play in it, or smell it, or touch it, they’d be OK,” she said. “But that’s exactly what kids do.”

Her own children, she said, appeared to suffer some ill effects at the time.

“Our kids had major bouts of diarrhea all the time,” she said. “Whether that was just kids and kids get diarrhea, who knows? But since we moved, we haven’t had any problems.”

The move did not appear to be a sure bet at first. Although her family was not told of the waste site beneath them when they purchased the home in 1985, Burns said a state law was passed soon afterward that required homeowners to inform potential buyers of possible health threats from their properties.

“When we bought our home we were not informed that our house was sitting on a toxic landfill, but we sold our house with full disclosures. We were amazed people paid full price for it,” she said. “We had people jumping at it, but we did also lose a couple of offers.”

Dang Khai, 30, who bought the house for his wife’s family, said that so far the sludge has not bothered anyone in the household.

“We know it’s there because the (health department) people went and checked it last year. But they weren’t alarmed for the people, and nothing has happened,” Khai said.

“The neighbors around me, they don’t mention anything about it,” he said. “So we’re not alarmed either.”