Health Risks, Cost Kill Plan to Turn Waste Site Into Park

Health risks and the cost of hauling away tons of contaminated soil have all but killed hopes of converting a former dump site in Santa Fe Springs into a park, city officials said.

Instead, oil companies that dumped toxic waste at the 43-acre site for more than a decade beginning in the 1950s are looking at topping the area with clay and concrete to make way for a possible outdoor storage facility, a plan suggested by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The privately owned site, officially known as Waste Disposal Inc., is next to a private high school in an industrial section of the city. City planners had hoped to clean up the long-fallow area to make way for development such as a park, said Andy Lazzaretto, an environmental consultant to the city.

“We were interested in trying to optimize the use,” of the site, he said. But recently, city staff agreed to the EPA’s solution when they learned that cleaning up the site would cost at least $30 million and could spew contaminants in the process, Lazzaretto said.

“Digging it up and hauling it away would create a huge amount of disruption,” he said.

The EPA’s proposal to cap the area has been estimated to cost $5 million and would be paid for by the oil companies that dumped petroleum residue and other materials at the site.