No Cease-Fire Between Brea, Half-Acre Owner Is in Sight

A private company fired the latest shot in its running feud with the city of Brea on Thursday when it filed a $400,000 lawsuit contending that police contaminated half an acre of land by using the area as a firing range for at least the past 25 years.

The suit alleges that city officials are violating the terms of an oral contract with Cooper and Brain Inc., a real estate and oil development corporation, by refusing to clean up lead slugs, copper bullet casings and chemicals from gunpowder that litter the half-acre parcel.

The remnants left behind by years of police firing practice require the removal or cleanup of about 165 tons of soil, said Allan Weiss, attorney for the company.

Copper is listed as a hazardous waste in California. Weiss said the residual gun powder on the site may also contain hazardous chemicals.

The Brea Police Department has used the half acre on Site Drive as the Brea Police Pistol Range since the 1960s, police said.

Under an oral contract made after Cooper and Brain acquired the land in 1970, the city “promised to return the (land) to its native condition, upon completion of its use as a pistol range,” the lawsuit contends. The city continued to use the land rent-free under the agreement, said Allan Weiss, an attorney for the company.

But city officials say the police were “unceremoniously booted off the premises” last August by Cooper and Brain, and the city never had a chance to clean it up.

Andrew Arczynski, assistant city attorney, said he had not yet seen the lawsuit, but added, “I have a difficult time believing that a public entity and a corporation can have an oral contract.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of run-ins between the city and Cooper and Brain, a feud that began in October, 1993, when the city took 2.5 acres of the company’s 60 acres of land in Brea by eminent domain to build a water tower.

Weiss said the city initially refused to pay Cooper and Brain the $369,000 fair market value of the 2.5 acres, which contained two oil wells, because the soil was contaminated with oil. The city argued that it paid more than $700,000 to clean up the site, Weiss said.

In a legal response to the city’s decision not to pay for the land, Weiss said the city has inflated the cleanup costs.

Weiss asserts in the response filed last month “that the city of Brea will fail miserably in any attempt to show that a cleanup was necessary, that contamination of naturally occurring unrefined crude was even hazardous . . . and that the costs incurred were reasonable and justified.”

Last week, Cooper and Brain was awarded the $369,000, but the city is appealing.

Fed up by his dealings with the city, Joel Cooper, secretary of the company, told Brea officials in June that he would begin charging $1,500 per month in rent for the shooting range.

“He said, ‘Why should we let the city stay at our property rent-free?’ ” Weiss said. “My client was understandably mad at the city.”

The city vacated the site by August, Weiss said.

So as the smoke clears in one skirmish between Brea and the company, another brews.

“I can’t imagine anybody not cleaning up the mess they made,” Weiss said. “Heaven help you if you’re a citizen of the city of Brea and you dump a can of paint in your alley.”