City Agrees to Settle Oxnard Dunes Lawsuit : Environment: Officials refuse to disclose terms. Residents sued after learning that their homes sat atop an old oil-waste dump.

The Oxnard City Council agreed Tuesday to a settlement in a massive lawsuit filed by a large group of residents over a subdivision built atop a former oil-waste dump.

City officials would not disclose the terms of the settlement in the Oxnard Dunes case, filed six years ago by 171 former and current residents of the subdivision.

Superior Court Judge Richard Aldrich ordered that the settlement terms be kept confidential when a tentative agreement with the city was reached Saturday. The plaintiffs also settled at that time with John McGrath, who owned the property before it was developed, and several other defendants.

A handful of defendants remain, including Oxnard Shores Co., which developed the subdivision in the 1960s. Aldrich scheduled settlement conferences today with the plaintiffs and the remaining defendants.

Superior Court Judge Melinda Johnson, who will hear the case if it goes to trial in February, said that despite the settlements, a trial could still last “a solid six months.”

At least one of the plaintiffs, Steve Blanchard, was not happy with the settlement. Blanchard abandoned his Oxnard Dunes residence in 1988, leaving behind a billboard bearing a skull and crossbones and the word Toxic . He said a few hold-out plaintiffs were given no choice but to go along with the settlement.

Aldrich did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Plaintiff Steve MacIntosh, however, said the “vast majority of the plaintiffs” represented by his lawyer were satisfied with the settlement, though “no one is dancing in the street about it. We look forward to perhaps settling with the remaining defendants.”

He expressed concern that Blanchard’s comments might jeopardize the negotiations.

“I don’t want to see what we’ve done go down the tubes,” he said.

The subdivision of about 100 homes sits off Harbor Boulevard, about 1 1/2 miles north of Channel Islands Harbor. During the 1950s, the site was used as a dump for disposal of oil field waste. The residents, however, didn’t find out about the dump until 1985, when a routine test revealed high levels of petroleum in the soil.

Fred Rucker, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs, said residents were not told about the history of the site before they bought their property. He said property values have suffered because of the disclosure.

“They’ve essentially become worthless,” he said. “To our knowledge, there has been only one sale there in the last five or six years.”

The other issue in the case, Rucker said, is that the chemicals in the soil “can potentially cause disease.”

State health officials, however, concluded in 1990, after nearly five years of testing, that the dump site posed no health risk to residents. Tests found no dangerous levels of contaminants in the soil, water or air.

Oxnard was named in the lawsuit because it allowed the development to be built. City Atty. Gary Gillig said the city agreed to settle the case even though all the evidence indicated that “there was no merit to the plaintiffs’ case.”

He said the lawsuit had been a drain on city funds, though he didn’t know how much. The settlement was reached, he said, because it gave the city “an opportunity to have certainty and end the case.”

He would not disclose the terms of the settlement. “At some point this thing will see light,” he said. It may be several months before the settlement is formally approved by all plaintiffs and parties, he said.

McGrath attorney Glen Reiser also said the cost of a trial, which could have taken two years, was a factor in reaching the settlement. He said Oxnard Shores knew that the property had been used as a dump when it bought it and that the family was not liable.

He said that before building the housing, the developer had hired a company to reclaim the dump site. It excavated the material, aerated it, mixed it with soil and reburied it, he said.

An attorney for the developer could not be reached.

The other defendants involved in the settlement Saturday were a construction company that took part in the reclamation, an Oxnard real estate company and two companies that allegedly dumped waste at the site.

NEXT STEP

Superior Court Judge Richard Aldrich has scheduled another settlement conference today with the plaintiffs and the remaining defendants in the Oxnard Dunes case. If the case is not resolved, it could go to trial in early February.