Legal Battle Is Likely Over Cleanup of Toxic Carson Site

Several oil companies and 45 municipalities appear to be poised for a legal battle over who should pay to clean up waste on the Carson site that was once in contention for a professional football stadium.

Representatives of Commercial Realty Projects, which owns the 157-acre former landfill that borders the San Diego and Harbor freeway interchange, say the oil companies should pay the estimated $30-million cleanup bill because they deposited most of the caustic waste that is there.

The oil companies, in turn, say responsibility lies with dozens of cities from Torrance to Santa Monica and with Los Angeles County. The firms say all of the municipalities transported trash there from the 1950s until the landfill closed in the mid-’60s.

The catalyst for the squabble was the recent demise of former Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz’s plan to build a pro football stadium and retail complex on the land.

Before construction could have begun, the project’s investors would have been responsible for cleaning up the site, according to Commercial Realty attorney Yolanda Orozco.

But when the National Football League opted to negotiate with backers of a competing stadium project at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Commercial Realty was left to dream a new dream for the former landfill’s future--and was stuck with that hefty cleanup bill.

On Thursday the NFL announced that it had abandoned its exclusive focus on the Coliseum, seeming to ensure that the league’s 32nd team will not be awarded to Los Angeles. The question of liability for cleaning up the Carson site complicates its chances for reconsideration by the NFL.

A 1988 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. report said Phillips Petroleum Co., Union Oil Co. and Unocal were among those potentially responsible for an alphabet soup of toxic substances dumped at the site. Federal law says that responsible parties must pay for cleanup before any development can ensue.

After making a commitment to the state to clean up the site, Commercial Realty filed suit against the oil companies.

According to the California Environmental Protection Agency, substances including nickel and vinyl chloride have seeped into the soil and ground water at the former landfill. The oil companies have filed claims against the 45 municipalities and Los Angeles County, seeking damages for their alleged roles in polluting the site. If no settlement is reached within three months, a letter accompanying the claims states, a lawsuit will follow.

“We found that 95% of the waste was from municipal waste,” said Jim Dragna, the attorney for the three petroleum companies. “So we would like the municipalities to help clean up.”

Orozco said her clients believe that the oil companies, which reportedly used the site to dump waste from drilling, should bear the brunt of the responsibility.

“We have argued that the municipal trash, the toilet paper and the carrot peels, do not emit the type of hazards that waste from the oil companies has,” Orozco said.

Ron Baker, a spokesman for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, said finding which entity is responsible is going to be difficult.

“We can’t tell you what was dumped in the 1940s and ‘50s,” he said. His department, which governs the disposal of toxic wastes, was created in 1976, about 12 years after the last case of alleged municipal waste dumping at the Carson site would have occurred. Baker said it is difficult to gauge whether the waste was municipal or industrial because of the less stringent environmental laws of that time.

Attorneys for Inglewood, one of the cities targeted by the oil companies, say that they have no records of their city having ever used the Carson landfill.

Joe Lawrence, assistant city attorney for Santa Monica, dismissed the oil company allegations as an attempt “to spread as wide a net as they can possibly throw to try to cover the cost of cleanup. Companies go for everybody who walked over the place to try to get other companies to pay the costs.” He said his department is investigating whether the city ever disposed trash at the site.

Carson City Manager Jerry Groomes said his city had committed itself to help Commercial Realty pay for the cleanup. He said Carson would probably help another developer with those costs in an effort to move a new project along.