Quick Action Urged for McColl Dump : Environment: Area residents express impatience with delay during hearing on EPA’s latest cleanup plan.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new remedy for the infamous McColl toxic-waste dump raised new questions and more demands for action Thursday from residents who have endured a decade of delays over the cleanup of the 22-acre Superfund site.

As the EPA and the oil companies it holds responsible for cleaning up the poisonous sludge continued to spar over the agency’s latest plan, more than 100 residents attended a hearing sponsored by the agency to comment on it.

“Is this all experimental and are we all guinea pigs?” demanded one woman, who declined to give her name. “I would like to know if any of you live here and will be affected.”

After years of demanding excavation and incineration of the poisonous sludge--a tarry mixture that contains toxic materials including arsenic, sulfur and cancer-causing hydrocarbons--the EPA last month proposed leaving the waste in the ground, solidifying about half of it and encasing the site.

But the McColl Site Group, the coalition of five oil companies responsible for the site, believes that the proposed $80-million solution is not practical because it tries to solidify too much waste and uses an untried technique to collect fumes during that process.

Bill Duchie, a spokesman for the oil company coalition, said the EPA plan is too expensive and unnecessarily thorough.

Jeff Zelikson, director of the hazardous materials division at the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco, countered that “they don’t know anything about what’s there. We’ve done all the exploration.”

Residents of Fullerton just want the dump cleaned up in a hurry.

“It’s simply bureaucracy in the size of government. It should happen right away,” said Don Graf, who lives with his wife, Shirley, half a mile from the dump.

The site, which has been on the Superfund list since 1982, was used to dispose of oil refinery wastes from 1942 through 1946. It has 12 large pits that contain highly acidic material.

The EPA has named five oil companies responsible for the cleanup: Atlantic Richfield Co., Phillips Petroleum Co., Shell Oil, Texaco Inc. and Union Oil Co.

The EPA plan is similar to a proposal by the companies to solidify the toxic liquid by adding ash and lime, then capping the site. But the two sides differ over how much sludge to neutralize.

The EPA is proposing to solidify 55,000 cubic yards. Duchie believes that 15,000 might be enough. “Even if some of the tar were missed, it can’t leak out because of all the extras that are put in place,” he said.

The EPA plans to build underground walls 60 feet deep to isolate the waste. It would cover the pits and build walls around the site.

Duchie said he thinks that the site could be cleaned up in four years by isolating the worst material at a cost of $80 million. He worries that the EPA plan could cost as much as $130 million.

But Zelikson, director of the hazardous materials division at the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco, said he believes that the EPA plan will cost only $80 million.