U.S. Must Pay for Cleanup of Dump, Judge Rules

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. government is responsible for the full cost of cleaning up the McColl Superfund site in what appears to be a major victory for oil companies who dumped toxic substances there during World War II.

The decision came as officials are completing the mammoth cleanup of the Fullerton site, after years of legal battling between the government and oil companies over who should pay for the work.

Judge Robert J. Kelleher ruled this week that Shell Oil Co., Arco and other firms are not responsible for the cleanup because the dumping occurred as part of the war effort.

Attorneys from San Francisco to Washington who pored over the complex 32-page decision were cautious Thursday in appraising the ruling’s impact.

The cleanup is expected to cost $80 million or more. But attorneys said it was unclear how much the ruling could cost the federal government because of the complexity of both the case and the judge’s ruling.

Federal officials had hoped that the court would allocate a large portion of the cleanup responsibility to the oil companies. But Kelleher did not.

“The war caused the problem, and like myriad others, the burden must rest on the United States, which is all of us,” Kelleher wrote. “The United States won the war and all of us paid the costs at the time. This is another such cost merely long delayed.”

Government attorneys expressed surprise at the ruling.

“We’re disappointed with the decision. We’ve made no decision about an appeal, and we are reviewing the decision now,” said Michael Gordon, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice.

The oil companies, however, greeted the ruling warmly, saying it supports their contention that the federal government should pay for the cleanup because of its intensive role in gasoline production during World War II.

“We feel vindicated by the decision,” said Walt Simmons, an Arco official involved in the long-running cleanup effort at the site, an oil refinery waste dump once operated by a man named Eli McColl.

Shell Oil Co. issued a statement from its Houston headquarters, saying, “Shell is very pleased to hear of the report of the court’s decision because we have always believed it’s appropriate the government should be responsible for World War II cleanup costs, rather than the companies named as defendants.”

The ruling stems from a 1991 lawsuit brought by the United States and the state of California against Shell, Arco, Union Oil, Texaco and the landowner at the site, which was placed on the federal Superfund list in 1983. The government suit attempted to recover cleanup costs.

Oily sludge was dumped into 12 sumps at the McColl site during the 1940s. Years of cleanup there have meant that the EPA has been readying the site for deletion from the national Superfund list.