Toxic Refugees Find a Home : U.S. Pays Rent for 45 Families Until Waste Sludge Is Removed

Gloria Delzeith has a lot of extra time on her hands these days.

A maid comes each afternoon to vacuum her carpets, make the beds, change the towels, mop the floors, scrub the sinks, do the dishes, scour the bathtubs, restock the shampoo and refill the candy bowl.

A hospitality room near her two-bedroom suite provides free breakfasts and light dinners as well as unlimited beer and daily newspapers. And to make sure that her family is completely comfortable, housekeepers change the curtains in her unit at least once a month.

“There’s nothing left to do,” said Delzeith, 52. “In the beginning it was kind of strange. Now I’m used to it; I learned to make an afghan.”

The best part, though, is that the tab for this $90-a-day hotel suite is paid by the federal government.

Delzeith, her husband, two grown sons, two dogs and a cat are among nine families being put up at the Marriott Residence Inn for up to six months while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency removes hazardous waste from their Westminster neighborhood.

Another 12 families are staying in houses renting for $1,200 to $1,800 a month. And before the project is completed late next year, said project manager Dick Vesperman, 45 families will have been temporarily relocated at a cost to taxpayers of up to $1 million--currently being doled out at a rate of about $75,000 a month.

“We looked at a number of alternatives, and this is by far the most cost-effective,” said Vesperman, noting that decisions on where each family stays are made jointly by the family and EPA interviewers based on individual family needs and budgetary considerations.

While the government probably could have found less expensive lodgings, he said, it decided on the extended-stay hotel facilities and rented homes rather than more conventional motel or hotel accommodations because of the long stays, expected to range from several weeks to more than six months.

“It’s fine to stay in a hotel for a few days,” Vesperman said, but staying somewhere for long periods of time is a different matter entirely. “Leaving your home for six months can be a very emotionally uprooting experience. We wanted to ease the trauma that some families experience.”

The seeds of that trauma were sown in 1936 when, according to historical records gathered by the EPA, the Long Beach-based Ralph Gray Trucking Co. dumped about 45,000 cubic yards of petroleum waste into four open pits in a field the company owned near Sowell Avenue and Golden West Street.

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Later, a developer intent on building a housing tract unmarred by the unsightly pits moved the hazardous material a few hundred yards away into two trenches, where it was buried 18 feet beneath the back yards of 25 of the homes he was building. Years later, the homes’ occupants began noticing a strange black goo seeping up through their back-yard lawns and patio cracks each summer when the weather got hot.

Exuding a powerful stench, the ooze caused coughing, headaches, sleeplessness, chest pains, nausea and breathing difficulties. One resident even blamed it for the loss of a lung and regular bouts of serious asthma.

Gray is long dead, federal officials said, and neither the trucking company nor the tract developer is still in business. Two years ago, the neighborhood--considered one of the worst hazardous waste sites in the United States--was added to the national priority list of Superfund sites, thus qualifying for a federally funded cleanup. And last summer, workers embarked on a two-year, $16.1-million project during which bulldozer operators wearing respirators are tearing up back yards and swimming pools to remove the toxic substance.

The pools, patios, fences and room additions will later be replaced.

The first of the 45 affected families--including the Delzeiths--moved out in late August. Most of them are expected to return to their homes by mid-January, just in time to be replaced by a second wave of evacuees whose back yards will be dug up next spring and summer. With the affected homes forming a T-shape on two intersecting streets, the entire tract covers about six city blocks.

While most of the toxic refugees say they are adjusting well to their new environs, the extended relocation is particularly hard on families with small children. This is especially true during the holidays, some say.

As a result of the difficulties, one family was moved into a single-family dwelling after spending several weeks at the Marriott Residence Inn. The members of another family currently staying at the inn say they are coping as well as they can.

“I miss my house,” said Maria Le, 32, who has been sharing a two-bedroom suite at the inn with her husband and three young children since mid-October.

One of the major problems, she said, has been the sleeping arrangements. Rather than crowd all three children into one bed, she and her husband are sharing their bed with one of them. On the plus side, she noted, the EPA pays for a driver to take her 6-year-old to school each day. But with Christmas fast approaching, Le said she is having a hard time envisioning how to properly celebrate the holiday at a hotel.

“It will be tough,” she said. “I can’t put up decorations” because of insufficient space. “Normally, we have the family over, but this year I don’t think we’ll be able to do it. And I’m planning to buy toys, but I keep putting it off because I have no place to hide them.”

For most of the affected families, however, the forced dislocation seems akin to an all-expense-paid extended vacation.

Because the majority moved into completely furnished two-bedroom units with kitchens, they generally left their furniture and appliances at home. Included in their hotel suites are ovens, toasters, microwaves, coffee makers (with coffee provided daily), living-room television sets with VCRs and additional TVs in each bedroom.

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The government provides each family with a $100-a-month “dislocation allowance” to help pay for such incidentals as use of the hotel laundry, phone calls and extra gasoline for daily treks to the post office. Although they may visit their homes by making special appointments in advance, few inn-dwellers ever bother to do so.

Instead, while workers wearing white coveralls and breathing masks toil six miles away spraying their back yards with odor-eating mists, the Westminster residents gather in the hotel lobby every day for a 5 p.m. social hour during which they hobnob with friends, drink unlimited amounts of free beer and wine and consume free popcorn, tacos, lasagna, spaghetti, chicken pot pies, baked potatoes, soup, salads and turkey sandwiches.

“I think it’s making us closer,” Ralph Johnson, a general contractor who has owned a house in the affected tract for eight years, said of the neighbors with whom he now shares a meal almost every night. “I’m getting to know people who I used to just wave at.”

Westminster officials say they do not begrudge the residents the special attention they are receiving or the money being spent on them. “It’s a lot of money,” Mayor Charles V. Smith said, “but these people are very highly inconvenienced by this whole thing. I think it’s great that the federal government was able to do this; there’s no way the city could have done it.”

And hotel officials describe the Westminster folks as almost perfect guests.

“We just try to make them feel at home while they’re away from home,” said Bruce Bitto, the inn’s general manager. “It’s working out well; nobody has asked for anything that anybody else wouldn’t get.”

About the only change he has made to accommodate the federally funded guests, Bitto said, is doubling the amount of free food available at the evening social hour. “They’re very tight as a neighborhood,” he said of the group. “They tend to stay longer and eat more.”

The increased evening food allotment has received rave reviews from the Westminster bunch, many of whom say that they rely on it for their main daily meal.

“You couldn’t ask for anything nicer,” said Vivian Jenner, who has lived at the inn for three months. “We all seem to be happy.”

Said Delzeith: “I’m going to be spoiled rotten by the time I get home.”

No situation is perfect, though, and this one too has its detractors.

One of them is Delzeith’s husband, Dennis, who says he has begun to miss something that many homeowners would willingly give a great deal to avoid.

“I don’t have any yardwork to do,” Dennis Delzeith complained. “I like to putter around, and this is a little boring.”

So how is he spending the extra time?

“I’m catching up on my reading,” said the toxic refugee.