Neighborhood Sighs With Relief as Toxic Cleanup Starts : Environment: Work begins at last at Westminster location the EPA calls one of nation’s most polluted. About 50 families will be relocated during effort.

Using a bulldozer to ceremoniously remove the first bucketful of earth from a vacant field, Environmental Protection Agency officials Monday began the cleanup of what they have described as one of the worst hazardous waste sites in America.

“This marks the beginning of the end of what’s been a toxic site nightmare here in your community,” Jeffrey Zelikson, director of the EPA’s western regional office, told the gathering of about 70 residents and city officials. “What has made this so difficult is that the waste is literally in your back yards.”

Dick Vesperman, project manager, concurred. “Everything finally has come to a head,” he said in an interview after the ceremony. “This is the true kickoff of the beginning of on-site work; we’re now in the mobilization phase.”

That phase has been a long time coming.

According to historical records gathered by the EPA, the waste has it genesis in 1936 when the Long Beach-based Ralph Gray Trucking Co. dumped about 45,000 cubic yards of petroleum products of unknown origin into four open pits in a field the company owned near what is now the intersection of Golden West Street and Sowell Avenue.

In 1958, a developer--apparently intent on building a housing tract unmarred by the unsightly pits--moved the hazardous material into two long trenches buried 18 feet beneath the back yards of 25 of the houses he was building.

And ever since then, residents say, the stuff has been oozing out of the heated ground every summer in the form of a black gooey tar exuding a powerful stench that many blame for health problems ranging from headaches and nausea to severe asthma.

“These poor guys have been scared to death,” Eber Knapp, a 35-year tract resident, said of his affected neighbors. “This cleanup will relieve the tension for a lot of people.”

Two years ago, the area was added to the National Priorities List of Superfund sites, thus qualifying it for the $15-million federally funded cleanup.

EPA officials say the work will be accomplished in two phases.

Beginning in two weeks, they say, the first of about 50 affected families will be relocated at government expense to area hotels, rented houses or the homes of relatives and friends. In their absence, bulldozer operators wearing breathing masks will tear up swimming pools, patios and room additions--all of which they will later replace--to dig deeply into back yards and remove the hazardous waste.

Half the work will be completed this summer, officials say, and the rest next summer. Numerous residents and city officials were on hand Monday to applaud the effort.

“This is a very significant event,” Westminster Mayor Charles V. Smith said as onlookers ate cookies, downed soft drinks and pored over a display of protective gear to be used by Rust Remedial Services Inc., the company contracted to do the cleanup. “This could have been a major catastrophe; without the (federal government) it would have been impossible to do anything about.”

Ralph Johnson, who has lived here for eight years, expressed relief that his neighborhood’s ordeal might soon be over.

“This means that something is finally really going to happen,” he said after watching the ceremonial bulldozing. “Before it was just talk; this is the start of the end.”