Toxic Waste Firm’s Deal Questioned : Environment: Regulators handled the permit process for an incinerator with unusual speed. A key official who had left his state job became a lobbyist for the company.

In the rolling hills above this withered farm town, past the road sign warning of high winds, the largest toxic waste landfill west of the Mississippi River accepts truckloads all day from around California.

The wind is what some residents fear most if the company that operates the landfill, Chemical Waste Management, gets permission to build the state’s first commercial hazardous-waste incinerator here.

“The morning after a storm, the farm dust covers the inside of my house,” said Esperanza Maya. What would happen, she wonders, if the wind carried toxic ash from the incinerator?

For years, Maya and other opponents have alleged a cozy relationship between Chemical Waste and the state agency that will decide the incinerator’s fate. Now, they believe they have the documents to prove their suspicions.

Those documents detail how state environmental regulators took extraordinary steps to help the toxic waste giant win a lucrative deal in Los Angeles. A memo obtained by the incinerator foes shows that state regulators were aware that a protest would surely follow here if their actions to benefit Chemical Waste became public.

“As usual, if you are caught behind enemy lines the State Department will deny any knowledge of this operation,” said Wade Cornwell, a state toxic control supervisor, in concluding the memo. “This memo will not self destruct in 15 seconds. Fuzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Critics say the essential link is Charles White, who was chief of the state Toxic Substances Control permit branch for the region until he retired from government in 1990 to accept a new job--as lobbyist in Sacramento for Chemical Waste.

It is White’s former colleagues who will decide if the incinerator--which would be built on farmland five miles from the California Aqueduct--complies with environmental laws. According to the memo, White’s ex-colleagues went to unusual lengths to help him secure a $16-million contract for Chemical Waste in 1991.

The contract was for removing toxic waste from an illegal dump on the route of the Century Freeway, which is under construction in Los Angeles. Chemical Waste was not the favored applicant for the cleanup, according to documents and interviews, but ended up winning the job after receiving necessary environmental clearance in an extraordinarily short time.

The state environmental official who handled the case--and who replaced White as chief of the permit division for the San Joaquin Valley region--denied that there was any special effort to help Chemical Waste.

“There might be some appearance of impropriety,” said William P. Ryan. “I guess it would raise some concerns. But, ultimately, we moved so quickly not to benefit Charles White and Chemical Waste but to get the freeway cleanup moving.”

Three months after joining Chemical Waste in 1990, White began tracking the California Department of Transportation contract to remove 250,000 tons of contaminated soil and debris from the illegal dump near Inglewood.

For safety and cost reasons, Caltrans wanted to avoid hauling the waste by truck and instead move it by rail. This presented a problem for Chemical Waste because its Kettleman Hills landfill--the only unrestricted Class 1 toxic waste facility in the state--can be reached only by truck.

With no rail line to Kettleman Hills, Chemical Waste proposed erecting a train-to-truck transfer station at a rail spur outside Huron, 20 miles north of here. Like Kettleman City, it is populated mostly by Latino farm workers.

A backhoe operating under a large plastic tent would transfer the contaminated soil from rail cars to 18-wheel trucks, which would be covered and cleaned for the drive from Huron to Kettleman Hills.

There was one major snag: White and Chemical Waste needed the state to approve the Huron transfer station in one month, or they would miss the Caltrans bidding deadline on the Los Angeles freeway cleanup. To accommodate White’s request, state regulators issued three controversial findings.

The first was a variance from the permit requirements of the California Safety and Health Code. Second, White’s former agency declared that there was no need for an environmental impact report. And finally, the normal period for public debate on the transfer station was cut to 21 days from 30.

The documents obtained by Kettleman City residents show that White stressed the urgency to Cornwell and to permit branch chief Ryan. Cornwell then took the unusual step of setting up a task force within his branch to expedite the request from his former boss.

“Time is critical in that CWM (Chemical Waste Management) needs to have a variance in hand prior to the Caltrans bidders conference,” Cornwell wrote in the memo.

At one point, the memo shows, Cornwell floated the idea of bypassing the state Environmental Quality Act altogether to speed up approval of the transfer station. He then cautioned against such an option, citing the controversy brewing over the proposed Kettleman Hills incinerator and the possibility of “public or special interest group scrutiny.”

“In my eight years here, we’ve never worked that fast,” said Linda Hogg, who oversaw the project for the state. “I racked up a lot of overtime that month. Forty-five days (to approve the transfer station) would be considered Indy 500 speed. . . . We did it faster than that.”

Hogg said the unusual speed in approving the transfer station was in part to help save taxpayers money by increasing competition for the freeway cleanup contract. Chemical Waste was bidding against a Texas firm and another California company.

But when asked if White’s presence influenced the approval process, Hogg chuckled. “You’re going to have to ask Bill Ryan that.”

Ryan said the contaminants were low to moderate on the toxic scale, limiting any environmental risk near Huron or Kettleman City. An environmental impact report is required only in cases where there may be a “significant” effect, he said.

“We’re not suicidal,” he said. “You cut the ex-boss a sweetheart deal and it comes back on you. This wasn’t a sweetheart deal.”

White denies that his former colleagues gave Chemical Waste special treatment. “The state put me through all the hoops and loops and then some,” he said.

The view is different in Kettleman City, where opponents hope to see the regulatory process block the incinerator from being built.

“How do we know who to fight when they’re all in bed with each other?” asks Maya, waving a thick packet of state documents and company letters in the air. “It’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”