County Ready for Y2K Environmental Hazards

Of all potential Y2K problems, one of the most worrisome, but least understood, is the danger from chemical spills and other environmental disasters.

While public attention focuses on the reliability of air carriers, banks and utilities, potentially more insidious threats lie closer to home. Enormous quantities of hazardous materials and other potential pollutants crisscross the county daily by pipeline, road and rail.

Across the county, about 2,900 businesses handle hazardous materials, and about one-quarter of them are in Oxnard. Offshore oil rigs pump hundreds of barrels of crude oil to onshore processing plants each day along the Central Coast. Millions of gallons of raw sewage flow to nine treatment plants from Simi Valley to Ventura Harbor each day.

“You can find these substances at plating shops. They can be at refineries, big manufacturers, everything from a local photo developing store to a gas station to a power plant,” said Steve Elkinton, who heads Oxnard’s hazardous materials unit.

Government regulators and emergency response crews emphasize that the risk of an accident is slim. They have spent much of the year working with companies to ensure that hazardous materials and sewage flows are not disrupted by the advent of 2000.

“It looks very promising that we’re not going to have any Y2K problems related to hazardous materials,” said Douglas A. Beach, manager of the hazardous materials section for the Ventura County Environmental Health Division. “The businesses seem to be on top of it, and I’m fairly confident these guys have their act together.”

The readiness effort began in March, when Gov. Gray Davis allocated $9 million and directed the state Office of Emergency Services to ensure that all significant hazardous materials handlers in the state become Y2K ready and have emergency response plans in place.

That effort focused primarily on 12,000 companies, none of them in Ventura County, said Steven DeMello, manager of the hazardous materials unit for the Office of Emergency Services.

“To date we have not identified a credible threat of a problem,” DeMello said.

Officials in Ventura County conducted their own survey, identifying 140 businesses that handle large quantities of chemicals or substances considered extremely hazardous. The companies insisted they are ready, although regulators inspected some facilities for confirmation.

One potential trouble spot is the Ventura sewage treatment plant. In the event of a prolonged electrical failure, aeration equipment used to treat sewage could fail, resulting in contaminated discharges to the Santa Clara River, said Don Davis, superintendent of the city’s waste water division.

In one nationwide survey, fewer than half of the sewage treatment plants and drinking water utilities had completed all phases of Y2K preparations, including contingency planning and tests. The survey was done in June by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Y2K and Society.

But others say the likelihood of a spill, both here and across Southern California, is remote.

“I don’t think we’re going to see 1/8sewage 3/8 spills because of Y2K,” said Ray Miller, executive director of the Southern California Alliance of Publicly Owned Treatment Works. “They have been working very diligently to make sure there are no problems. The big agencies are better prepared and the smaller agencies don’t have that much in the way of technical problems they would face.”

Along the Central Coast, federal inspectors have been working with oil companies since last December to ensure that no spills occur after the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, said John Romero, a spokesman for the federal Minerals Management Service.

The industry has a strong incentive to prevent spills. An accident would be disastrous for oil companies hoping to drill on 36 undeveloped leases in areas from Port Hueneme to San Luis Obispo.

“We’re not going to be taking any risks here. Everything is working fine,” Romero said.

In one way, the county is lucky. Few major industries or petrochemical plants with enormous stockpiles of dangerous chemicals are located here.

California’s stringent environmental laws, which require companies to have contingencies in the event of emergencies such as earthquakes or accidents, provide a measure of safety as well.

Also, the county’s location on the West Coast allows officials virtually all day Dec. 31 to watch what happens in other nations and states where the New Year will dawn before it reaches California.

“We have an additional 17- to 20-hour head start on the rest of the planet. It enables us to anticipate a potential problem, determine if it’s credible and alert the public,” DeMello said.

Nevertheless, public safety officials are taking no chances. Three-quarters of the personnel assigned to the county’s hazardous materials response unit will either be on the job or on standby for New Year’s Day, Beach said.

The county Sheriff’s Department, local fire departments and city hazardous materials crews have also beefed up staffing.