Millions Pledged to Dump Cleanup

Federal environmental officials, announcing “an important step” in efforts to clean up the Casmalia toxic waste site in northern Santa Barbara County, said Friday that 50 private companies and federal agencies have agreed to pay almost $32 million toward the overall estimated cleanup cost of $272 million.

The agreement announced Friday was one of several in recent years with large groups of companies and government agencies that legally dumped waste at the Casmalia Resources Hazardous Waste Facility between 1973 and 1989. During those years, about 10,000 companies used the dump.

The Casmalia dump, 10 miles southwest of Santa Maria and just north of Vandenberg Air Force Base, accepted about 5.5 billion pounds of acids, pesticides, oil waste, heavy metals and other toxic materials before its closing in 1989 and subsequent classification as an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site in 2001.

At the time, Gov. Gray Davis called the dump one of California’s highest priority environmental cleanup sites.

Thomas A. Bloomfield, lead EPA attorney for the Casmalia restoration effort, said one of the first major breakthroughs in raising money for the eventual cleanup of the site came in 1996, when 50 other major waste generators agreed to a $72-million settlement.

Since then, he said, there have been other large settlements with the state, other waste generators and the owners of the site. Friday’s settlement marks completion of negotiations with most of the large dump users, he said.

Negotiations, subject to federal court scrutiny, have raised more than $150 million so far, with more of the needed $272 million expected to come through future negotiations.

“The significance of this is, it’s another important step in securing the money for the work ahead of us, a major milestone in that direction,” Bloomfield said. “We are still negotiating with hundreds of parties, and we expect the enforcement effort will continue over the next several years.”

Estimates of how long it will take to clean up the Casmalia waste site range as high as 20 years. Complicating the process of cleaning up 43 hazardous-waste storage ponds, seven burial trenches and six landfills is that the dump has become one of the most populous habitats for California’s endangered red-legged frogs.

“We are getting the job done,” Bloomfield said of the problem of protecting the frogs.

Casmalia is a community of about 200 people. Although the dump has been closed for years, residents of nearby cities such as Santa Maria and Lompoc have remained concerned about groundwater contamination, though none has been discovered.

Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) said Friday’s announcement is an indication that the government is moving toward fixing the Casmalia problem.

“The health and safety of the residents of Casmalia and the surrounding communities is my highest priority,” she said. “This settlement allows EPA to continue its work to remediate the site, and I will continue to work with the community, the state and the EPA to closely monitor that process.”

Bloomfield said that the 46 private companies and four federal agencies involved in Friday’s settlement will decide among themselves how to divide cleanup costs.

Major users of the dump involved in Friday’s settlement included Phillips Petroleum Co., Cabot Oil & Gas, Berry Petroleum, Southern California Edison, the Navy, the Air Force and the Defense Property Disposal Office. The cities of Santa Barbara and San Francisco were also large waste generators.