2 Firms to Buy Out Homes Near Toxic Site

Guillermo and Leticia Aguirre have been camped out for nearly three years in a residential motel, fleeing a toxic grab bag of chemicals buried behind their home.

This was to have been a mere two-week stay while the federal government dug up their backyard as well as their next-door neighbor’s to remove chunks of DDT and search for other chemicals believed to be coming from two toxic chemical sites.

Behind the Aguirres’ home on West 204th Street in an unincorporated Los Angeles County neighborhood near Torrance are the remnants of a World War II-era synthetic rubber plant where old waste pits known to contain the carcinogen benzene are still located. Up the road is Montrose Chemical Corp. of California’s now-closed factory that manufactured the pesticide DDT until it was banned in 1972 from the United States. The old factory is now a federal Superfund site.

The weeks turned into months and the months dissolved into years, and the Aguirres are still living in the motel in Torrance. They are among 33 families who were relocated from their homes in April 1994 when the cleanup began. Some are living in rented houses. About 10 families are at the motel. Their relocation costs are being paid by the federal government.

But their uncertain future is about to change.

For the first time in California, two chemical companies--Shell Oil Co. and Dow Chemical Co.--have tentatively agreed to purchase homes near a federally declared toxic site, according to Environmental Protection Agency officials. The deal to buy 65 homes would end residents’ nightmare on a three-block stretch of West 204th Street.

In the tentative agreement expected to be finalized in early March, the two chemical companies that operated the synthetic rubber plant, most of which has been converted into an industrial park, have agreed, the EPA says, to buy residents’ homes on West 204th between Budlong and New Hampshire avenues. The area is believed to be most exposed to chemical contamination and closest to the waste pits.

“I’m thrilled they are buying us out,” said Dunia Ponce, 36, who for two years worked 72-hour weeks as a registered nurse to buy her $155,000 gray stucco bungalow. She and her husband have been renting a house in Torrance while awaiting their uncertain fate.

To date, the EPA has paid $3 million to make up the differential between residents’ old mortgages or old rents and their new temporary rents. Each family also gets $150 a month to cover higher electricity and gas costs.

But money can’t wipe away the anger that people like Ponce feel about being relocated for three years. She is also disturbed that she was never told her house was near two toxic sites. “I would never have invested a single dime on a neighborhood like that,” said Ponce, who had to leave her house for temporary accommodations only two years after having purchased it.

Bob Frame, 66, has mixed feelings about the buyout. He and his wife, Jessie, 65, were not among the 33 relocated families, but they were included in the larger buyout area.

They have lived in their home since 1961. It was where they raised their seven children and hoped to spend the rest of their life.

The house is special to them because it has an enormous backyard that was once practically blanketed with an organic vegetable garden. Several fruit trees dot the well-tended lawn, but now the Frames have to toss out the juicy apples, oranges, plums and nectarines that grow around their house.

The couple worry they will not get enough money for their home to find something similar. Although an appraisal hasn’t been done yet, they believe they will receive about $150,000 for their three-bedroom home. These days, they say, it is hard to find a comfortable home for $150,000--particularly with a spacious backyard like theirs.

“It is going to be difficult to move. We’re not as young as we used to be,” Bob Frame said. “There has been a lot of anxiety and frustration. Everything that could disturb a person. There are concerns about our health.”

Until now, the Frames have been blessed with relatively good health. But their neighbor, Robert Evans, 37, who was relocated with his wife and six children, has not been so lucky.

Evans takes off his hat and exposes a head covered with haphazard bald spots. Patches of hair have fallen off his mottled arms and legs.

When he moved into his three-bedroom home 11 years ago, he took on a massive remodeling project that he said exposed him to DDT-tainted soil and dust as he dug near the foundation. He has had two grandchildren who died, he said. One died from sudden infant death syndrome; another lived only 30 minutes after being born with a partial brain.

Evans blames the deaths on chemical exposure. However, health experts emphasize that although there is DDT in the area, it is difficult to conclusively link it to residents’ serious health problems.

Cynthia Babich, 37, who moved to the street in 1989, has had four operations, one to remove an ovary. Large white powdery chunks of DDT were found in her backyard when the EPA began testing for toxic chemicals. The chickens that ran free in her backyard were laying eggs contaminated with DDT, EPA exams showed.

“In the summer, you could walk down the neighborhood and everybody would have a headache,” she remembered.

The buyout is a small victory for people like Babich, who is head of a residents group called the Del Amo Action Committee. The committee negotiated the deal with the chemical companies to put an end to their uncertainty. But Babich, who lived in a home she continues to pay rent on that will be bought out, wants to see the other three affected blocks on West 204th Street bought out too.

“We didn’t want to strike a deal for half the community,” she said, noting that her goal is to continue negotiating a buyout plan for the almost 70 other homes on West 204th Street.

The saga of these environmental refugees began in September 1993, when the EPA discovered DDT along the street. The agency had been looking for any carcinogenic chemicals that might have spread to the neighborhood from the nearby waste pits of a synthetic rubber plant owned by Dow and Shell. That location, east of the Montrose site, is now a federal Superfund site nominee called the Del Amo Waste Pits.

DDT chunks the size of bowling balls were also dug up in the backyard of the Babiches’ next-door neighbors, the Aguirres. For some time, residents had been battling a host of health problems ranging from rashes, headaches, nosebleeds and achy joints to cancer.

The EPA contends that the DDT, which is a known carcinogen and in high doses affects the human nervous system, is linked to the Montrose factory up the road on Normandie Avenue. It closed in 1982, its 13 acres now covered with asphalt. The EPA says it is the source of the world’s largest deposit of DDT, flushed through county sewers to the ocean floor off the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

After spending $1.2 million for the backyard cleanup, the EPA discovered more DDT-laced landfill near six additional homes. Testing turned up traces of DDT in household dust inside 25 more homes along West 204th Street.

The EPA devised a $7-million plan for additional cleanup, but dropped it when residents balked at the idea of returning to their homes. Instead, they wanted the houses to be bought, torn down and the land turned into open space. The EPA didn’t believe the DDT levels were high enough to warrant a federal government buyout similar to those done at Love Canal, N.Y., or Times Beach, Mo. It has never been done at any federal site in California, according to the agency.

With help from U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills), the residents, who had formed the Del Amo Action Committee, sat at a negotiating table in November 1995 with Montrose, Dow and Shell to discuss the companies buying the homes. Montrose soon walked out on the talks, Babich said, and is being sued by the residents. Shell and Dow remained.

Attorney Karl Lytz, who represents Montrose, said company officials left the negotiations because they concluded that Montrose was not responsible for the contamination.

A tentative agreement was reached Jan. 30 after more than one year of negotiations. Left behind, however, was the rest of West 204th Street, whose residents were told they didn’t live close enough to the waste pits to get a buyout. This has left many of them bitter and worried.

“I really don’t want to live here,” said Paul Kidwell, 58, whose home will not be bought. “I don’t like living on top of all these chemicals.”

Last year Kidwell had a cancer-infected bladder removed after a silver-dollar-sized tumor was discovered. Later, he had two more tumors removed from his mouth. Other illnesses have left him incapable of working full time.

He knows it won’t be easy to sell his home to a new buyer, and he won’t rent it out to expose others to chemicals.

“I would rather stay here and die here than rent it out,” he said. “But there are those who have done that.”