An Environmental Feud at the End of the Trail in Norco

In western Riverside County, the rolling hills and the tumbleweeds act as a fortress of sorts--an ideal setting for discreet weapons tests or earthquake simulations, and ideal for homeowners looking for a little elbow room.

But it seems Norco isn’t big enough for both. Dozens of families who bought homes in two tony new neighborhoods are alleging that the high-tech engineering firm Wyle Laboratories is not the neighbor they thought it was when they moved in.

They charge in a lawsuit that the developers of two communities, Stoneridge Estates and Hidden Valley, did not adequately disclose the types of business Wyle conducts in Norco. Residents say that business has polluted their neighborhoods. Some want the area cleaned up. Others want their money back.

Wyle, based in El Segundo, specializes in testing and evaluating tools and equipment under environmental stress. The company, which is not a defendant in the lawsuit, acknowledged using some toxic chemicals over the years but denied that any resulting contamination is dangerous to residents.

Local residents are abuzz with these discoveries:

* Ground water on Wyle’s 450-acre site, near the crook of Interstates 15 and 91, contains trichloroethylene, a carcinogen, at levels 128 times higher than the state’s limit for drinking water, according to the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The chemical, often used to remove grease from metal and to clean liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks, can cause respiratory problems and headaches, and has produced liver tumors in mice.

* The California Department of Toxic Substance Control confirmed last week that it is investigating whether there are unusually high levels of lead on Wyle’s site. One sample, taken late last year, suggests that the lead may have been left behind by a detonation, according to a government document.

Studies have shown that children who swallow lead can suffer brain damage, muscle weakness, kidney damage, hyperactivity and other problems. In adults, exposure has been linked to high blood pressure, strokes and nerve damage.

* Riverside County health officials have reported that they found hydrazine, a rocket fuel once used in Wyle’s tests, in two wells. County inspectors also discovered faulty chemical inventory records at Wyle and incomplete training documents.

Lisa Blake and her husband live with their three children in a $300,000 house they bought in March. Her 12-year-old son and his friends played frequently in a nearby pond. Blake fears that contaminated ground water might have found its way into the pond.

“Never in a million years did it enter my mind that the water that drained into that pond would have filtered through a property that had contaminated water, and that they would be standing in it,” Blake said. “What incenses me is that there are people that should know better, knowing that families were going to be moving in around them.”

The situation has elicited inevitable comparisons to the dispute over chromium 6 that leaked into ground water near Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Hinkley site--and spawned the environmental campaign depicted in the film “Erin Brockovich.”

But Wyle and the developers scoffed at the comparisons--largely because the contamination found on Wyle’s property does not approach the levels of toxic waste in Hinkley, a desert town near Barstow. They said Wyle has been on the site for 45 years and has never hidden what it does.

Company Says Homes, Families Are Safe

Moving next door and then complaining about Wyle’s operations, they said, is akin to moving into a home under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport, then complaining about the noise from passing jets.

“The homes are safe. The families are safe. And the property is safe,” said Scott Jones, a spokesman for the Inland Empire division of Centex Homes, one of the nation’s largest home builders and the developer of an 82-home site near Wyle.

Jones said Centex has hired an environmental consulting firm to perform additional tests in the area “to resolve the issues once and for all.”

“It’s a top priority,” he said.

The other developer, Western Pacific Housing, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The environmental regulators who have discovered the pollution said the incipient battle over the Norco property is not of the proportion of Hinkley.

There is no evidence, said Kurt Berchtold, assistant executive officer of the Regional Water Quality Control Board in Riverside, that any contamination has infiltrated the residents’ drinking water. And there is no evidence that any contamination has put residents in danger, regulators said.

“Our inspections reveal some violations, but nothing really, really significant,” said Earl Tuntland, assistant environmental health administrator for the Riverside County Department of Environmental Health. “And they [Wyle] have worked with us to make corrections. We’re pretty happy.”

The lawsuit, filed in Riverside County Superior Court, does not charge that Wyle Laboratories has polluted the plaintiffs’ property but focuses instead on the disclosure issue. California law requires that anyone selling property disclose information that could affect the property’s value and desirability.

LeRae Spera and her husband spent $376,000 on a large, new home in Stoneridge Estates, a development just east and south of the Wyle property, in March. Three months later, Spera was in City Hall, researching the area, when she overheard two city officials talking. One official said he thought Norco should buy the Wyle property and turn it into an area for parks and trails, Spera said.

“The other person said, ‘That would not be a good idea because of the contamination. That would be crazy.’ I thought: What contamination? I just couldn’t believe what he had said,” said Spera, who has helped galvanize neighbors in a grass-roots campaign for information.

“Had I known all of this, would I have wanted to live there? No, probably not,” she said.

Wyle’s niche emerged after World War II, when studies showed that some equipment failed because the military did not understand how it would perform in different environments.

Wyle can simulate huge dust storms on its site. It can conduct, and has conducted, tests to ensure that a valve needed to shut down a nuclear power plant will still operate after an earthquake, said Drexel Smith, Wyle’s senior vice president and general manager.

Some Tests Use Explosives, Lawyer Says

Residents said they were not warned that some of those tests involve toxic chemicals. Their attorney, Tony Lanza, a founding partner of the Irvine law firm Lanza & Goolsby, said they did not know that Wyle periodically blows things up during tests. The lawsuit accuses the developers of intentionally misspelling “Wyle” on disclosure forms to keep residents from researching the firm.

Developers denied that charge, and Smith pointed out that two 80-foot water towers on the site advertise the firm in giant block letters--”WYLE”--that are clearly visible from surrounding streets.

“The obligation is there to disclose these types of facts,” Lanza said.

“I don’t know that Wyle is actually hazardous to these people’s health. We don’t know that, and we don’t allege that. What we’re saying is that the buyers, when they plunk down a half-million dollars for a piece of property, they have the right to know and make their own decision.”