10 Cities Agree to Help Pay for Landfill Cleanup : Environment: The settlement removes them from a legal battle with dozens of industrial firms. Other cities will let a judge decide who should cover the costs at the Monterey Park site. Millions of dollars are at stake.

Ten cities, including four in the Southeast area, have agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to help clean up a Monterey Park dump once considered one of the most toxic in the nation.

Council members in Bell Gardens, Norwalk, Paramount and Huntington Park agreed to the payments to avoid a trial scheduled to begin Thursday to determine the liability of cities that had their solid waste dumped at the site.

Also agreeing to help pay for the cleanup are El Monte, Sierra Madre, South El Monte, San Marino, Beverly Hills and La Puente.

Several cities, however, are prepared to go to trial. They face millions of dollars of cleanup costs if they lose the case before U.S. District Judge William M. Byrne Jr. in Los Angeles, city officials said.

The legal battle is to determine who should help pay to clean up the Operating Industries Inc. landfill, which was closed in 1984. Dozens of industrial companies that used the landfill have paid millions of dollars for the cleanup, but two years ago filed the federal suit, contending that the cities should share the costs. The companies argued in the suit that residential and commercial waste from the various cities contributed to the contamination.

City officials scoff at the argument. “They are saying that the dirty diapers that we threw away for years are as toxic as the hazardous liquids they dumped there for decades,” said Pat West, deputy city manager of Paramount.

Paramount officials, however, decided to pay about $150,000 this week to avoid going to trial and risking additional liability. Bell Gardens agreed to pay $185,000; Huntington Park, about $110,000, and Norwalk, $99,000. Henry Barbosa, Bell Gardens city attorney, said the city was not liable, but settled to avoid further litigation costs.

Most of the cities that have settled out of court were among the smallest contributors of refuse to the landfill. The cities that were identified as the heaviest users have been asked to pay larger sums, and have balked.

Officials in the remaining cities--Alhambra, Bell, Commerce, Compton, Cudahy, Lynwood, Maywood, Montebello, Monterey Park, Rosemead, San Gabriel, South Gate, South Pasadena and Temple City--rejected proposed cleanup payments and prepared to go to trial.

In its lawsuit against the cities, the corporations said that certain types of residential refuse--pesticides, paint thinner, solvents, caustics, acids and other common household waste--increased the toxicity of the 190-acre dump.

The suit contends that the cities should be held liable since they arranged for disposal of the refuse.

City officials disputed the argument.

“It’s an absurd lawsuit,” said Bell City Administrator John M. Bramble. “They assume that because we issued an agreement to have our trash hauled, that we are somehow responsible.”

Bell has been asked to pay $3.9 million for the cleanup, but officials rejected the proposal. Bramble called the amount “egregious.” He said the city had no alternative but to go to trial.

Montebello officials rejected a proposal that they pay $6 million, and Lynwood officials refused a request that they pay $4.5 million. “We don’t pay ransom, and we don’t pay tribute,” said attorney Barbosa, who represents the two cities as well as Bell Gardens. He said the requests were “totally out of line.

“To get out in a settlement, you have to do it on reasonable terms,” he said. “We counter-offered a sum of money within reasonable measures. It was turned down.”

Three years ago, dozens of corporations--including Chevron, Atlantic Richfield, Exxon USA, McDonnell Douglas, Coca-Cola and Union Oil--jointly agreed to pay $61 million toward the first phase of a cleanup ordered by the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1986, the dump was designated a federal Superfund site, which made it eligible for several million dollars in federal loans.