State Ends Vigil at Toxic Waste Site : Environment: Agency removes guard it had hired to maintain flame burning excess gases. City officials say they’re worried toxic vapors will escape if flare is extinguished.

Contending that there is no immediate danger, state environmental officials have ended a round-the-clock vigil at an abandoned oil refinery where more than 1 million gallons of toxic waste are being stored near the San Diego Freeway in Long Beach.

The California Environmental Protection Agency last week removed the private contractor it had hired to maintain the site at a cost of $37,000 a month.

The principal duty of the contractor--IT Corp. of Torrance--was to maintain a flare that burns excess gases from tanks on the property, which was last operated as a bulk fuel storage and blending terminal by a Las Vegas-based company that is in bankruptcy. State officials had feared the gases could explode if not burned. But now, the flare burns unattended.

The state EPA officials say they have thoroughly evaluated the site in recent weeks and determined that there is little risk of explosion if the flare is turned off. Because of that, the state pulled the three IT Corp. employees off the site at midnight Wednesday of last week, state EPA spokesman Allan Hirsch said.

“We don’t believe it poses any more of an explosive hazard (without the flare) than any other refinery or tank farm in the area,” Hirsch said.

But the action has drawn criticism from Long Beach officials, who are seeking a Superior Court order to compel the agency to resume maintaining the flare and guard the site until the toxic waste is removed. The five-acre site is near Cherry Avenue and Spring Street.

No hearing date has been set, but the city hopes to secure the order in Long Beach Superior Court next week, Deputy City Atty. Thomas A. Vyse said.

Initially, fire and explosion were the main fears. But now city officials say they are worried about the toxic vapors and other pollutants that would escape into the air if the flare is extinguished.

“Until the material gets removed from the tanks, it still presents a hazard,” said Diana M. Bonta, Long Beach’s director of health and human services.

Long Beach does not have the money to monitor the flare to ensure that it will continue to burn, Bonta said. But the city has posted a guard at the abandoned terminal, which is fenced and posted with signs that warn, “Caution, Hazardous Substance Area.”

Without the flare, cancer-causing benzene will escape into the air in the immediate vicinity of the facility at levels 6 to 60 times higher than usually allowed, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates air pollution in the area.

The nearest homes are several blocks away, but numerous businesses surround the abandoned refinery.

Continuous exposure to that level of emissions over 70 years would cause 66 cases of cancer in a population of 1 million, according to AQMD projections.

In addition, 175 pounds per day of hydrocarbons, the main ingredient in smog, would be released from the tanks, an AQMD spokesman said. The amount of hydrocarbon emissions is relatively small, considering the average oil refinery puts out about two tons of hydrocarbons a day, said Bill Fray, AQMD assistant deputy executive officer for operations.

“Our main concern is the benzene,” Fray said. With the flare burning, the cancer risk is less than 1 in a million, he said.

But Hirsch, the state EPA spokesman, said the state simply could not afford to continue operating the flare given the small risk involved.

He said state EPA officials are still arranging to have the toxic waste removed from the site, which could take several months.

“Low levels of benzene would be coming from the tanks,” Hirsch said. “We have no evidence that the levels would be high enough to cause any type of short-term health threat.”

The abandoned refinery is a rusting collection of old equipment, pipes and exhaust stacks. Weeds sprout from everywhere. The asphalt-and-dirt site is stained with oil.

Last May, the state declared the site a public danger because of the possibility of fire and explosion.

Hirsch said the state EPA had erred on the side of caution. He said the toxics experts at his office were not familiar with refinery operations and did not realize that the emissions would present little risk of fire or explosion if allowed to escape into the air unburned.

Of main concern is a 1.5-million-gallon tank that is nearly filled with a gasoline-like mixture that contains benzene. The tank, which is leaking, also contains industrial waste water and sludge that includes heavy metals and other hazardous materials, Hirsch said.

Also of concern is a smaller tank that contains about 175,000 gallons of an oil and water mixture, Hirsch said.

There also are about 300 55-gallon drums on the site that contain petroleum products, and four piles of soil contaminated with petroleum sludge.

Officials initially thought the large tank and the piles of soil contained sizable amounts of cancer-causing PCBs. But Hirsch said the most recent testing indicated very little, if any, PCBs were on the site.

Oil-contaminated rainwater also sits in bermed areas surrounding the storage tanks.

State officials initially estimated that it would cost as much as $40 million to clean up the site. They now say the estimate was far too high. Hirsch said the agency had no new estimate.

It also is not known where environmental officials will obtain money for the cleanup. Wright Cos. of Las Vegas, which last leased and operated the terminal, is in liquidation. Bankruptcy Trustee Tom Grimmett has said the firm is $10 million in debt and cannot afford to clean up the property.