Oil Recycling Firm Faces Criminal Charges : Environment: D.A. claims that hazardous waste was illegally stored at abandoned refinery site.

The district attorney’s office has filed criminal charges against a Signal Hill oil recycling company, alleging that the firm illegally stored more than 175,000 gallons of hazardous oil waste in a tank at an abandoned oil refinery in Long Beach.

Petroleum Recycling Corp. will be arraigned Feb. 19 in Long Beach Municipal Court on one felony count of illegally storing hazardous waste and one misdemeanor count of storing hazardous waste without a permit, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph P. Charney, who is prosecuting the case.

If convicted on both counts, Petroleum Recycling Corp. faces fines of up to $100,000 a day for each day the waste was illegally stored. Charney said he also will seek to force the firm to remove and dispose of the waste, which is flammable and contains cancer-causing PCBs.

“They are in violation of using that facility for a lengthy period of time,” Charney said.

He said records show that Petroleum Recycling Corp. used underground pipelines to transport waste to and from the abandoned refinery, known as Wright Terminals, from the summer of 1989 through the summer of 1990.

An official for Petroleum Recycling Corp. said the firm is innocent of any wrongdoing but declined to discuss specifics of the case.

“Our attorney’s opinion is we were operating legally,” company Vice President Gary Leger said. “One of the great unanswered questions in the whole thing is who put what in that tank? We don’t believe that anything that’s in that tank currently . . . has anything to do with us.”

Petroleum Recycling Corp. recycles waste oil at 2651 Walnut Ave., a stone’s throw from Wright Terminals. The abandoned refinery is near Cherry Avenue and Spring Street, surrounded by light industry and bordered by the San Diego Freeway (405).

Petroleum Recycling Corp. never had a permit to use Wright Terminals as a storage facility for its waste, Charney said.

The more than 175,000 gallons of liquid waste contains cancer-causing PCBs and will probably have to be removed by a hazardous-waste hauler, officials said.

Wright Terminals has been an environmental headache ever since Wright Cos. of Las Vegas, Nev., declared bankruptcy and abandoned the site last year.

State and city health officials have been working to clean up the site.

Last month, more than 1.7 million gallons of liquid oil waste were removed from more than 20 tanks on the site for recycling.

What remains is the waste that allegedly came from Petroleum Recycling Corp., oil sludge at the bottom of storage tanks, and about 250 55-gallon drums, some of which contain hazardous waste. Several small piles of oil-tainted soil also are at the site.

State officials say it will be several years before the site is cleaned up. The ground at the site is tainted, and past tests have indicated that there is at least some ground-water contamination.

The former Western Oil Refinery was last operated as a bulk-fuel storage and blending terminal by Wright Cos., which went into bankruptcy and was liquidated.

The bankruptcy trustee in the case said all assets would go to the main creditor of Wright Cos.-- Marine Midland Business Loans Inc.--and there would be no money for the cleanup. A judge declared the site abandoned last May.

Officials hope they can find a developer who would be willing to pay for the cleanup in order to build on the site.