Oil Firms Oppose U.S. Plan to Clean McColl Dump Site : Environment: They contend process would produce odors and be expensive. The EPA will sponsor a public meeting next Thursday to compare tests and proposals.

The federal government’s solution for cleaning up the McColl Superfund Site is ineffectual and would cause offensive odors, representatives of the oil companies who caused the contamination said at a public meeting Thursday.

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Instead, the oil companies offered a cheaper solution, which they maintain is also more effective, to clean up the 22-acre site about a block south of Ralph B. Clark Regional Park.

The companies, which have banded together as the McColl Site Group, sponsored a meeting at the Los Coyotes Country Club where they offered their plan to local residents of how to best clean up the area based on results from a three-month test. Shell Oil Co., Atlantic-Richfield Co., Texaco Oil Co., Union Oil Co. of California and Phillips Petroleum are under court order to pay for most of the cleanup costs.

Environmental Protection Agency officials favor decontaminating the site, where an estimated 100,000 cubic yards of petroleum waste are buried, by injecting a cement-like substance into the ground to neutralize it. However, petroleum company officials criticized the EPA proposal as costly and time-consuming.

According to an oil company study, the EPA’s preferred method to solidify the sludge would cost up to $97 million and take up to eight years to complete. In addition, the study determined that solidifying the waste can make the toxic material more mobile and create a heat buildup that releases odorous gases.

The oil companies favor capping the 12 sumps where the wastes were dumped. Officials said capping the sumps would cost no more than $65 million and can be accomplished in about three years. Capping would contain the waste material and prevent odors from escaping, according to the oil company study.

EPA officials will sponsor a public meeting next Thursday where EPA and oil company test results will be compared. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at D. Russell Parks Junior High School in Fullerton. The agency is expected to decide on a decontamination plan before the end of the year.

The polluted site was once in a remote part of Fullerton. During World War II, the oil companies used the area to dump petroleum waste from the production of aviation fuel. A golf course was built on the site in 1960, and several hundred homes were built near there in 1976.

Two years later, the owners of the new homes began complaining of odors and ooze seeping from the site. The EPA declared McColl a major toxic problem in 1979 and added it to U.S. Superfund priority list of toxic cleanup sites in September, 1983. A fence surrounds the site to keep people out.