REGION : Five Cities Agree to Toxic Cleanup Costs

Five area cities have agreed to pay almost $4 million to help clean up a 190-acre landfill in Monterey Park where they and other local governments dumped tons of toxic waste for decades.

After nearly 10 years of litigation, Bell, the City of Commerce, Cudahy, Maywood and South Gate have agreed to give their share of the cleanup cost to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Eight other cities, the county and Caltrans are also part of the settlement.

“This brings to a close what was an important and enormous piece of litigation for South Gate,” City Atty. Arnold Alvarez-Glassman said. South Gate’s bill of more than $2 million is the largest among area cities.

Cudahy City Manager Jack Joseph said that insurance will cover roughly 50% of his city’s share of the cleanup, but the settlement is still a financial burden.

Cudahy has already paid its $350,000 penalty from the city’s general fund, Joseph said. As a result, two staff positions will not be filled, the city newsletter has been eliminated and the Fourth of July celebration has been canceled.

The settlement is “just another hammer on the cities for something, in our opinion, we had no control over,” he said.

The EPA has estimated that the total cleanup cost could reach $650 million over three decades. Under the settlement filed Dec. 28 in federal court, the cities will no longer be liable for the Operating Industries toxic waste site after paying fixed amounts, said Timothy Gallagher, who represented the municipalities.

After more than 100 companies and public entities, including Mobil, Exxon and General Motors, paid the EPA $205 million to clean up the dump, they sued the cities, county, state Department of Transportation and 18 waste-hauling firms in 1989 to force them to share the costs.

Five years later, the 14 cities reached a tentative agreement to pay $32 million. The December settlement called for the municipalities to give the money directly to the EPA.

Area cities have agreed to pay the following:

* Bell: $415,000

* Commerce: $395,000

* Cudahy: $350,000

* Maywood: $550,000

* South Gate: $2,203,999

Gallagher said if not for a compromise reached with insurance companies of the individual cities, the municipalities wouldn’t have been able to settle. On average, insurance companies will pay 60% to 90% of the settlement, he said.

“With the insurance companies coming to the table with a large portion of the money, it made the settlement possible because smaller cities would not have been able to generate that amount of money without a major impact to their budgets,” Alvarez-Glassman said.

South Gate’s insurance will cover half its bill, he said. The rest of the money will come from trash collection fees; the city does not expect to cut services.

The eight other cities that signed the settlement are Alhambra, Compton, Lynwood, Montebello, Monterey Park, Rosemead, South Pasadena and Temple City. Alhambra is paying the most, $8.5 million, followed by Montebello at $4.8 million and Monterey Park at $4.6 million.

About 170 companies dumped industrial waste at the Operating Industries site from 1948 to 1984. From 22 to 31 tons of solid waste and more than 300 million gallons of liquid waste were dumped there, including such cancer-causing substances as vinyl chloride and trichloroethylene.

The site was added to the Superfund priority list of toxic sites in 1986. A site is placed on the Landfill Superfund list when the EPA determines that it poses a long-term threat to public health or the environment.

“This negotiation between the cities and the generators of waste has speeded up the cleaning process,” said Paula Bruin, the EPA’s western region public affairs officer.

“A lot more time and money could have been wasted with this particular landfill, but instead the money will go directly to the cleanup and not be tied up in litigation.”