NEWPORT BEACH : Toxic Material Being Placed in Trash, Bay

Joe Delgado tried to pull the plastic bottle out of the trash-compacting truck as soon as he spotted the white chemicals leaking out of it. But the 29-year-old refuse worker was stopped in his tracks.

“Within two minutes, I could feel my nose start burning, my eyes were watering and I got a headache real quick,” said Delgado, a six-year employee of the city of Newport Beach. “It hit me that quick. I thought it was just going to go away but it got worse.”

What overcame Delgado were fumes from chlorine swimming pool tablets that someone had illegally tossed in the trash. Delgado had just dumped the contents of a garbage can from a Bayshores home into the city truck. He and his partner suffered such headache, nausea and respiratory problems that they were taken to Hoag Hospital and kept there for several hours.

Delgado’s experience a month ago has become much too common in recent months, city officials say. They worry that residents aren’t getting the message that household toxic substances shouldn’t be thrown in the trash or down gutters and storm drains, which lead to Newport Harbor.

General Services Director David Niederhaus recorded six incidents from March to July in which trash collectors were overcome by hazardous waste fumes. A total of nine workers were affected in that four-month period. Before March, “we averaged one or two incidents every six months,” Niederhaus said.

Newport Beach police have recorded 76 hazardous waste incidents this year, including chemicals dumped in the trash, paints and construction debris washed down storm drains and residents keeping containers of household toxics in garages and yards.

The Fire Department responded to 16 household hazardous waste spills during the first six months of the year, half of which were in June alone.

City officials say the increase in incidents is primarily due to the surge in the coastal city’s population during the summer. But they are still concerned that residents are either too lazy or too uninformed to take the hazardous materials to the proper county disposal centers in Huntington Beach, Anaheim and San Juan Capistrano.

The hazardous waste becomes especially dangerous when thrown into city trash trucks and mixed with other materials because the interaction of common substances such as fertilizers and chlorine can release gases that are sometimes lethal, according to city officials.

“People aren’t stopping to think of them as a hazardous waste,” said John Ludvigson, a police officer who serves as the city’s environmental services coordinator. “People clean house and throw this stuff away and don’t think it’s going to hurt anybody.

“The bottle gets thrown in the trash truck, it explodes and now you have a caustic material spraying the refuse manager.”

To beef up public education efforts, Newport Beach officials are considering distributing warning stickers to place on garbage cans as a reminder that paints, cleaners, dyes and other chemicals should not be thrown in the trash. The city already mails out informational brochures in water bills but because of the high tenant turnover in the beach areas, city employees may begin going door-to-door with the information, Niederhaus said.

To try to protect trash workers, Niederhaus has purchased a new line of protective face gear and gloves. “But it’s quite an expensive thing for the city to do to outfit these guys,” he said. “Beyond that, you need a flack vest or armor, I guess.”

Since dumping waste in the trash and the harbor are both violations of the state penal code, the city has also tried tracking down and criminally prosecuting residents and businesses that throw hazardous materials in the trash and storm drains.

About half the cases go to court, while the others are handled by issuing warnings and fines that cover the cost of city response and cleanup, according to Ludvigson.