Hazardous Waste Site Seeks to Reopen

In bloated drums and railroad cars, it began piling up two decades ago and was left, state officials say, to fester. Long-forgotten ordnance, the lead compound used to make detonating fuses, an acid so potent it was once harnessed to fuel torpedoes--it’s all here, hidden in the recesses of a 20-acre hazardous waste storage facility.

The waste stored at Denova Environmental Inc., in the northern end of this San Bernardino County city, was so volatile that it ignited spontaneously last year, causing a brief fire and sending firefighters scrambling to develop contingency plans for evacuating the north end of Rialto.

Fearing that simply moving the chemical canisters could cause them to explode, firefighters called in the FBI and the local bomb squad to blow up 55-gallon containers of chemicals.

Already temporarily shut down, the site will be permanently closed if state environmental officials have their way. Meanwhile, Denova Environmental is preparing to argue at a hearing next month that it is riskier to shut down the operation than to keep it open.

Denova is the last private company left in California that is licensed to store and dispose of certain types of explosive waste, said Jeanne Garcia, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

State officials concede that if they close the site as planned, many shipments of explosive waste will have to be sent as far away as Texas. That will be more expensive for government contractors, law enforcement agencies and other clients who have counted on Denova to store and dispose of thousands of gallons of volatile, explosive chemicals, the company argues.

Potential Risks of Shutdown Cited

What’s more, said Charles Whisonant, the Newport Beach attorney who will represent the company at an administrative hearing next month in Los Angeles, the state’s plan to close Denova would increase the number of times companies and government contractors must shuttle hazardous waste out of California. Transporting the volatile waste across country also increases the risk of dangerous accidents, Whisonant argues.

“We think it will be a tremendous burden on industry,” Whisonant said. Denova, he said, “provides a service. It gets it out of the hands of the government contractors or agency and gets it into the hands of experts in the explosives industry.”

State environmental officials, local law enforcement officials and neighbors remain skeptical.

They point to a long list of environmental violations at Denova that they say has been growing for years. Jim Bruce, Rialto Fire Department battalion chief, chuckled this week when he noticed that his Denova file is now 4 inches thick. The risks associated with shutting Denova down, Garcia said, are vastly outweighed by the benefits.

One inspection conducted by state investigators, in February 2001, discovered nearly 60,000 gallons of hazardous waste at the facility--32,000 gallons more than Denova’s license allowed.

“They don’t have a good history,” Garcia said. “It poses more of a risk for them to stay open and continue receiving hazardous or explosive waste.”

Through Whisonant, Denova’s acting president, Robert Cole, declined to comment for this story.

In many ways, the saga of Denova Environmental mirrors the growing pains of the Inland Empire. Once a country town that catered to grape growers and dairy farmers, Rialto today has large pockets of heavy industry.

Many businesses moved to the region simply because there was more room there for large manufacturing and storage facilities--and, environmental activists argue, because the region has not been particularly strict about policing environmental hazards.

“It sure seems like the regulators are asleep at the wheel at those places out there, and completely overworked and unable to deal with the scale of the buildup,” said Daniel Patterson, an ecologist with the Center for Biological Diversity based in Idyllwild and Tucson. “As L.A. and areas further west got filled in, all that stuff got pushed out. And things are bound to fall through the cracks.”

Some residents are leaving.

In 1952, Leonard and Bobbie Cutler bought a former vineyard in northern Rialto and began building their home. It was in the middle of nowhere, and at the time, they thought it would be a nice place to retire.

Now they’re retired, and they’re getting ready to move.

Over the years, the industry that moved into the area began to eat away at their community, said 77-year-old Bobbie Cutler. The traffic became unbearable as trucks that stopped at the various “big box” warehouse operations in the region began roaring past the Cutlers’ home 24 hours a day. An explosion at a fireworks plant several years ago blew out the windows on many nearby buildings, Cutler said.

Denova Environmental is a stone’s throw from their Locust Avenue home.

“The stench from that place is overwhelming at times,” she said. “And every time we hear the sirens, we don’t know if something is exploding or what’s happening.”

Local officials plan to widen roads in the area to cope with the traffic, and the government is preparing to buy the Cutlers’ property as part of the road construction project, Cutler said. The couple plan to move to Yucaipa--22 miles east, closer to the desert, where there are still a few vacant hilltops.

“This house had its charm. But not anymore,” Cutler said. “Between the traffic and the smell from that place over there ... well, we keep the doors and the windows closed.”

The Denova site, originally operated by Broco Environmental Inc., opened in about 1980. At a largely outdoor facility accessed by a winding dirt road, ringed by a chain-link fence, it has stored a laundry list of hazardous chemicals, specializing in certain types of explosive waste that are more commonly handled by military installations and government agencies.

Whisonant would not name Denova’s customers, but said it wouldn’t be unusual for a local law enforcement agency to send ordnance that it no longer needs to the site.

“If they found out that they did need it, they could come and get it,” he said. “Or we would be the guys that would dispose of it.”

After an explosion in 1997, the state moved to revoke the site’s operating permit. Denova Environmental bought the compound in 1999 and had been operating under a temporary permit. But after state inspectors repeatedly cited it for environmental violations, such as chemicals that were leaking into the ground, the state fined Denova $2.5 million and moved to shut it down, Garcia said.

Denova was also one of three companies that sent hazardous waste to a toxic site in Brownsville, Texas, in hopes of selling the waste to the Mexican government, Garcia said. The Texas compound has been declared a federal Superfund site, she said, and Denova was again accused of mishandling hazardous waste and fined more than $300,000, she said.

Denova has appealed the state’s move to permanently revoke its operating license, leading to next month’s proceedings with the state Office of Administrative Hearings, Garcia said.

Whisonant said Cole, who took over from the former president--Gene Van Houten, who resigned in the spring of 2000--has spent considerable money and time trying to rectify Denova’s problems. Whisonant added that there is no evidence of permanent contamination at the site to soil or ground water.

The company will also contest the $2.5-million fine, which it believes is excessive, Whisonant said.

“We feel that to the extent that there were problems at the facility, these were things that occurred under the previous management,” Whisonant said.

“The current management has been spending a lot of time, effort and money trying to address their concerns. Not that we agree that there have been violations at all--but we do recognize that they have some concerns.”

Those concerns, Cutler said, should allow the state to permanently shut the site down. Cutler said she and and others in the area will be watching next month’s hearing closely.

“The air is so rancid that you can’t hardly breathe anymore,” Cutler said. “They haven’t been responsible at all.”