Stringfellow Dump Didn’t Hurt Neighbors, Jury Told : Environment: The ailments are probably caused by Southland’s ‘pollution load,’ state attorney charges.

Using computer-generated animation to illustrate what he called “real-world” evidence, a state attorney told a Superior Court jury Wednesday that chemicals dumped at the notorious Stringfellow Acid Pits did not cause illness among the residents of the adjoining, semirural community of Glen Avon.

Because “no harm was caused . . . by anything traceable to the Stringfellow site,” attorney Howard Halm told jurors, the state should not be held liable for having permitted the industrial waste dump, which operated at a former rock quarry from 1956 to 1972.

Halm said the various physical injuries allegedly afflicting the 3,800 residents--who are suing the state and 10 large corporations that dumped waste chemicals there--were probably caused just by living under Southern California’s ambient “pollution load.”

“There are many sources of pollution,” he said. “These plaintiffs are not unique. They’re no different than any other group of people living in an urban 20th-Century area.”

Halm said the plaintiffs’ case is based only on computer modeling and theories. Tests of the ground water, surface water and air in Glen Avon show that none of the chemical soup created at Stringfellow was inhaled or ingested by the plaintiffs, he said.

The Stringfellow lawsuit pits an initial 17 plaintiffs against some of Southern California’s largest manufacturers. Lawyers say it is the largest such toxic tort case in the nation except for cases involving asbestos.

The plaintiffs argued that chemicals leached into the ground water that then tainted the town’s water wells, washed down from rain runoff, and wafted into the town on the wind. The first 17 victims to go to trial, ranging in age from 12 to 79, say they suffer from headaches, chest pain, chronic fatigue, neurological damage, learning disabilities, stunted growth and anxiety that they may get cancer.

But in his daylong opening statement, Halm said the first indication that a plume of tainted ground water reached town was in 1985, when the well used by the local elementary school first showed evidence of chemicals. But that was seven years after the well was taken out of use, he said, adding that other wells remain free of Stringfellow chemicals.

Any chemicals that flowed off the site with surface rainwater runoff were directed into storm channels, he said, and were steered clear of the town’s streets and yards. To support that point, he cited a series of soil tests over several years throughout the town that showed no signs of unusual chemical contamination. Any chemicals that did show up, he said, may have been left from the town’s early agriculture businesses or were consistent with the chemical makeup of the nearby hills.

Throughout his statement, Halm illustrated his points with photographs, charts and videos--shown on the courtroom’s 18 video monitors--which were prerecorded on a laser disc. At one point, he used a darting arrow to show the path that Stringfellow waste water took through the flood control channels.

Halm will continue his opening statement today, when he is expected to argue that air monitoring tests, conducted before the Stringfellow site was capped in 1982, also showed no evidence of pollution that could be blamed on the acid pits.

Outside the jury’s presence Wednesday, the 10 manufacturers argued that they should not be held liable for punitive damages because they dumped at the state-approved site. The companies’ attorneys said the plaintiffs failed in their opening arguments to suggest how the manufacturers acted despicably in dumping chemicals at Stringfellow.

The trial is expected to last nine months.