Methamphetamine Labs Leave Growing Toxic Legacy : Crime: Drug ‘kitchens’ in motels, rentals pose serious health threats, and cleanup costs outstrip resources.

Richard Espinoza was already suspicious of one of his tenants, who seemed to have a stream of visitors at all hours, many of them carting packages.

So when another renter complained, Espinoza called the police and threw on his bathrobe to accompany them at midnight to the upstairs unit of his Fullerton fourplex.

There, the 77-year-old landlord came face-to-face with a stranger eating a hamburger as a batch of methamphetamine cooked on the stove. Noxious red stains were splattered across the counter and floor, the signatures of a methamphetamine kitchen.

The increasing prevalence of meth labs in the close quarters of apartments, hotels and trailer parks across Southern California is more than a worrisome drug problem; it has grown into a troubling environmental health risk that threatens neighbors, children who grow up with the labs, and the motel guests and tenants who move in afterward.

So extensive is the cleanup job on these labs that the costs have outstripped the budgets allotted by state and local agencies, and the state agency that recently took over cleanup responsibilities is turning more and more to landlords such as Espinoza for payment.

Though the landlord assisted police last month, state officials said they now plan to send Espinoza a $4,500 bill for the cost of hauling away and disposing containers brimming with more than two dozen chemicals.

Espinoza said he had no clue a bill might be coming.

“I don’t think I can be responsible for anything, because I didn’t know what was happening,” said Espinoza, insisting that he had done his best to keep an eye on his tenant, even jotting down suspicious license plates.

Methamphetamine, also known as speed or crank on the street, provides a cheaper, longer high than cocaine. The relative simplicity of cooking it from readily available ingredients has fueled a home-grown industry.

Toxic chemicals typically used in producing methamphetamine include iodine, hydriodic acid and caustic soda. The chemicals can irritate eyes and skin on contact and damage the lungs if ingested or inhaled, said Al Blevans, an industrial hygienist for Orange County’s Heath Care Agency.

Other chemicals, such as red phosphorus, can become highly flammable and in some cases, explosive, environmental officials said. And some, such as iodine, evaporate when heated and the toxic vapors are easily inhaled by children who happen to be nearby.

“In a situation where somebody might be heating it up . . . there can be trouble,” Blevans said.

A package of red phosphorus ignited in a Stanton meth lab on a recent morning, prompting health officials to evacuate hundreds of children from an elementary school across the street.

For his master’s thesis, a state Department of Justice supervisor in Sacramento recently tested a small group of children who had lived with meth labs and found that many were under the influence of the potent psychoactive drug.

Jim Hall, a department chemist in Riverside who has seen more than 250 labs in his 15-year career, estimates that children are present in about 75% of those labs.

“I see toys. I see food. I see all sorts of stuff that are associated to children, often mixed in with the dope,” Hall said.

Often, toxic chemicals fill saucers, jars and other containers that may have also been used to store food, he said.

“I have to believe that there are people cooking every day,” said Gary Hudson, a supervisor with the Justice Department’s Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement who heads the meth lab enforcement team in Orange County.

“It’s the exact same hazards and the exact same danger, no matter what the size of the lab. If it blows, it blows. A fire’s a fire. If it burns, if you breathe phosphene vapor or acid vapor, the smallest amount will damage your lungs.”

The cooking process alone is sometimes enough to contaminate a room--a disturbing prospect for motel guests who unknowingly check in after a cooker checks out.

“When it gets into the carpets and drapes, this could be very hazardous to someone who is renting the room and goes to sleep breathing that,” said Bob Merryman, division director for the Orange County Health Care Agency.

The scraggly man was in Room 115 of an Anaheim motel for less than two hours when the manager saw smoke. By the time she and a clerk got to the door and inhaled the toxic fumes, the occupants were gone.

What remained that September evening was all too familiar to law enforcement: reddish-yellow stains on the floor, sink, walls and curtains. The motel employees complained of throat pain and were sent to the hospital. County health officials taped off the unit and more than a month later, the room is still unusable.

Investigators said they found receipts that showed the speed cook had been motel-hopping for months.

Until July, the state Department of Justice assumed the burden of cleaning up labs, but it could not afford to haul waste for every police department that asked for help, and complained that toxic cleanup wasn’t a job for law enforcement.

The Legislature quietly transferred the responsibility to Cal-EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, putting the cleanup task in the hands of an agency that normally handles hazardous waste matters. The change also was meant to ensure that even small police departments could get the job done, said Karl Palmer, chief of the agency’s emergency response unit.

But less than half the anticipated funding materialized, and the state agency is fast outpacing its $1.3-million annual cleanup budget for the entire state, Palmer said. The money may run out well before the end of the state’s budget year in June. In addition, a General Fund cleanup account created by state legislation, which was supposed to receive revenue from seizures and other sources, has never had any money deposited in it.

Since July, the state has cleaned up 230 meth labs across California at a cost of $711,000.

By summer, the state expects to clean more than 650 labs. That doesn’t include cases handled by federal authorities.

But the work is not done once the chemicals are hauled away.

Spills and fumes can seep into walls, wood and concrete, creating low-level contamination that cannot be removed with regular household cleaners, according to a Cal-EPA report released in 1993. For those who unknowingly move into a former lab, that possibility is unsettling.

Removing any contamination that remains still falls to local agencies. In one Los Angeles County lab, in Lawndale, the occupants had cooked for more than six months and it remained so contaminated a year later that officials would only enter in full protective clothing. They recommended razing it.

As the boom in meth labs has created a marriage of law enforcement and environmental health agencies, those agencies have not always shared the same goals.

When the Justice Department handled disposal, agents often tried to take everything that was contaminated, even electrical cords, said Ed Machado, who heads the department’s clandestine lab program for the state.

“We didn’t want someone to pick something up unknowingly and get a chemical burn,” he said. “It could have red phosphorus on it. You could touch it and rub your eye.”

But Palmer said his agency removes only items that are “grossly contaminated,” leaving glassware and heating mantles with toxic residue behind to be taken to a regular landfill. “We don’t want to add a bunch of cost for something that doesn’t appear to be a real threat,” he said.

That, Machado said, often leaves law enforcement to deal with the leftovers. Agents have sometimes left items from labs in a property owner’s trash bin, he said.

“We’ve gotten more than uncomfortable with that because that’s not right,” he said. “Just because it looks clean doesn’t mean it’s not contaminated. But we can’t take it all because we don’t have anywhere to put it. We’re really not garbage collectors.”

And the state’s cleanup money must be spent frugally, Palmer said.

Enter landlords such as Espinoza, who Palmer’s agency contends are technically liable for picking up the cleanup tab under laws normally aimed at corporate polluters with deep pockets.

The Justice Department did not bill property owners, but Palmer said Cal-EPA has decided to do so, and that the first bills are expected to go out soon.

A cleanup typically runs about $3,200, but can go much higher depending on the size of the lab and type of chemicals involved. A recent San Bernardino County cleanup cost $64,000, and a Stanislaus County lab cleanup ran $57,000 because a fire left toxic chemicals swirling in the soggy mess created by fire department hoses.

Even labs where cooking has not yet begun can prove costly to clean and potentially hazardous, largely because of the high cost of chemical disposal.

At an Anaheim house across from a day-care center, the state’s contractor recently hauled away 60 pounds of volatile red phosphorus, 18 gallons of hydriodic acid, contaminated glassware and a highly flammable, five-foot cylinder of lung-searing hydrochloric gas.

The bill: $10,000.

State officials said they plan to send it to Robert Inge, the 75-year-old owner of the rental home. Inge was incredulous.

“I lost money and the place is still vacant,” he said, noting that he has already spent more than $1,000 to repair damage to the house.

“Why should I have to pay more money? I had no way of knowing what they were going to do.”

Palmer said he would prefer to charge the drug makers, but they are often transient cookers who elude police. Those who are arrested rarely can afford to pay.

Property owner groups have begun to complain to Cal-EPA about the billing practice, and some investigators worry the strategy could have negative consequences. Landlords and motel managers may be reluctant to cooperate with authorities, and the number of cookers who already slip away could increase, Hudson of the Justice Department bureau said.

“How many motel managers are going to come to us and say, ‘What do I need to do to clean up?’ ” he said. “They’ll come in and see the chemicals, and down the toilet or into the trash they’ll go.”