SANTA ANA : Neighbors Say Big Hole Is the Pits

The only thing that the residents of a private road in Santa Ana wanted was an end to the stream of motor oil that had flowed from a neighboring automotive repair complex for the past four years.

Instead, residents complain, when an environmental management company attempted to clean up the oil-saturated soil, it left a hole the size of a swimming pool.

The residents live in a 10-unit condominium complex on a private, unnamed road just off of Hazard Avenue.

“It’s been like this for more than three months,” said Phuc Tran who lives at the end of the road. “This is terrible. We can’t keep living like this.”

The residents’ trouble started four years ago when the Harbor One Stop automotive complex set up shop. Tran and his neighbors said they began to notice a steady stream of foul-smelling waste oil washing down the street during business hours.

Later, county health officials determined that a leak had caused contamination of the soil in front of the residents’ property.

“What we found was that a steady release had been going on for some time,” said Bill DeKamp, supervisor of hazardous waste for the County Health Care Agency.

DeKamp said the spill prompted the district attorney’s office to file a lawsuit against Larry R. Smith, the owner of Harbor One Stop. The case ended with Smith agreeing to clean up the contamination.

The cleanup, however, was delayed when Smith went into bankruptcy, DeKamp said.

Once the cleanup efforts began in April, the cleanup company dug out too much dirt, DeKamp said.

“The contractor was overly aggressive,” DeKamp said. “He just kept digging, instead of digging and testing each batch of soil.”

The contaminated soil was put into enclosed metal containers, which have not yet been removed from the neighborhood. The extra soil, which apparently is not contaminated, is sitting in piles.

DeKamp said that the cleanup is complete and that the contamination had produced an environmental hazard but no health threat.

Residents disagree.

Hoang Pham, who lives on the corner of the private street near Hazard Avenue, contends that the contamination had caused skin rashes on his children and wife. Although his wife’s legs and arms still show traces of a skin irritation, his two children’s skin rashes have disappeared since the flow of waste oil was stopped.

Tran said he was once plagued by headaches from the smell of waste oil, but they, too, have stopped.

“But we are still worried,” he said, standing in front of the garage where his car has remained for more than four months, trapped because of the giant hole in front of his driveway.

“We want to know what our children have been exposed to, and when is this going to end,” he said.

The hole, surrounded by a chain-link fence, may be filled by the end of July, said Doug Moorehead, a court-appointed receiver who is overseeing Harbor One Stop. He said the crater will be filled when the county confirms that the soil is safe to be returned to the hole.

But Tran and his neighbors are still unsure.

“No one has come to us from the county and told us everything is cleaned up and safe,” Tran said. “What is it going to take for us to get this problem fixed?”