ORANGE : Firm Agrees to Pay for Cleanup of Creek

A metal company has agreed to pay between $50,000 and $75,000 to clean up contaminated Buckeye Creek, the Orange County district attorney’s office announced Tuesday.

Vi-Cal Metals Inc., at 1635 N. Case St., will pay to remove metal-cutting oils, which reportedly leaked from their plant into a storm drain that leads to the nearby creek, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Michelle Lyman.

“They basically kept a sloppy shop as opposed to the intentional dumping of hazardous waste,” Lyman said. “They were allowing it to drain off the property. We believe that very small releases were occurring over a period of time, but we were only able to catch them on three occasions.”

The company also has agreed to pay $3,200 in fees to the Orange County Environmental Management Agency and the Orange Fire Department. That is approximately what it cost the agencies to conduct their investigations, which included sampling and laboratory analysis, Lyman said.

Gary B. Torpy, an attorney for Vi-Cal, said Tuesday that while the company has agreed to the terms of the settlement, it is not admitting any guilt in the matter.

“We don’t necessarily agree with what (the district attorney’s office) says,” Torpy said. “The decision to resolve the matter wasn’t based on our according great merit to the case. It was an economic consideration on our part which weighed the cost of cleanup against the cost of defending the case.”

Lyman said that when oil and scrap metal samples were taken from the driveway of the company and chemically analyzed by the Environmental Management Agency, they were found to match scrap metal fragments and contaminated soil samples from the creek.

“There was no additional penalty because they are a small business,” Lyman said. “Obviously, it’s going to cost them a lot of money to do the cleanup properly.”

The company has until June 1 to complete the cleanup, which will be supervised by the Environmental Management Agency.