EPA to Aid in Cleanup of Abandoned Plant

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been called in for a million-dollar Superfund cleanup of thousands of gallons of hazardous materials left behind at an abandoned Anaheim industrial plant.

A March 1999 fire at the Monitor Plating facility spread at least 50,000 gallons of industrial solutions, including cyanide, PCBs, laboratory waste and already contaminated soil, said Steve Calanog, EPA’s on-site coordinator in San Francisco.

He arrived at the Anaheim site last week to oversee an emergency federal cleanup after county health officials requested help. County officials would not comment immediately.

“There’s still quite a bit of hazardous waste here that no one is managing or controlling,” said Calanog, who is supervising a dozen EPA cleanup workers. “If it rains or a tank leaks, the waste could spread off-site, and exposure to cyanide materials could be potentially lethal.”

The plant, on Orangefair Lane near the Riverside Freeway, is in an industrial area with no residents in the immediate vicinity, said Calanog, who is still concerned about getting the waste treated before vandals or vagrants have a chance to wander through the area and expose themselves to harmful chemicals.

“There’s evidence that homeless are in and around the property,” he said. “It looked like someone had been around the facility just by the amount of trash and beer bottles left behind.”

Another federal official said there isn’t an immediate health risk, even if someone had been loitering on the property, since the undiluted chemicals are mostly tanks and barrels.

The owner of the Monitor Plating plant, Brett L. Pio, rented the facility from the Slack Family Trust, which owns the property. On Aug. 18, Pio filed for bankruptcy. Contractors who were originally hired to clean up the mess quit because they weren’t getting paid, Calanog said.

Since then, the environmental health division of the Orange County Health Care Agency has tried to do the cleanup, but it finally turned to the federal agency last week for help.

Pio’s business, industrial plating, involved putting a thin coating of metal on objects. The site’s waste was spread by large amounts of water pumped in the facility to put out the 1999 fire. The water also spread the hazardous waste into a nearby drainage ditch, and into soil that is still contaminated, said Calanog.

He said it could take a month to three months to complete the cleanup. The EPA team still has to assess the damage in the building itself, which is about 18,000 square feet, and contains 70 plating vats buried in the fire debris.

The main concern is about contaminated ground water and accidental exposure if someone unknowingly strays onto the contaminated soil, said Randy Wittorp, representative of a regional office of the EPA based in San Francisco. Wittorp said he didn’t know how close the nearest drinking water well was to the contaminated site.

“It’s always possible when you’re doing these removals to find more contamination you’re not aware of,” said Wittorp.

Calanog said the former Monitor Plating site is now fenced, with 24-hour security. Calanog’s team, including heavy equipment operators and removal and sampling specialists, will try to leave the site completely free of waste. They will dig up the hazardous soil and have it treated and disposed of before they vacate the two-acre area.

Though Pio, who could not be reached for comment, has declared bankruptcy, the property owners are considering a lawsuit against him and a related corporation, said Sam Vaccaro, Irvine attorney for the Slack Family Trust.

“[Pio] did start some work, and did contract with third parties to do the cleanup, but then he abandoned the project,” said Vaccaro.

Wittorp said there isn’t an immediate health risk, even if someone had been on the property.

“They’d have to have body contact with the hazardous substances in the tanks and barrels,” he said. “The chemicals in the soil would be at much lower levels, so bodily exposure wouldn’t be lethal.”