Superfunds Not Super Fast at Toxic Cleanup

Lubrication Co. of America recently urged customers to join with it to “clean up our (Los Angeles’) industrial ‘act’ � by giving waste oils and solvents to the company for recycling.

“WE LOVE L.A. Enough . . . to start doing something� about toxic wastes, the oil blending and recycling firm said in a flyer that was distributed to its customers.

“We try to wear the white hat,� company President Grant Ivey said in an interview.

Lubrication Co. in January gained recognition in the environmental arena, but not in the way it had hoped.

At that time, state health officials added the company’s oil refining and storage plant near Canyon Country to the state Superfund list of toxic waste sites that may pose a long-term threat to health or the environment.

It is one of 10 locations in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys now on the mushrooming roster of state and federal Superfund sites needing priority attention.

Expanded to 180 Sites

All 10 sites are on the state Superfund list, which in January was expanded from 93 to 180 sites. Four also are among a more select group of 786 dumps that have final or proposed federal Superfund status.

State officials said a history of leaks and spills of petroleum wastes had contaminated as much as half of Lubrication Co.’s 17-acre site. Recent tests have also revealed low levels of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and high levels of lead in soil at the refinery.

Besides the waste oil plant, the nine other local Superfund sites are:

Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the mountains above Canoga Park, where trichloroethylene, or TCE, a suspected cancer-causing solvent, has spilled and leaked from waste ponds into ground water.

Thatcher Glass Manufacturing Co. in Saugus, which, according to state health department files, “has a history of ground disposal and spills� of oily wastes and water laced with caustic compounds and toxic chromium. The plant is near the Santa Clara River in an area where the water table is high, leading to concern about potential contamination of drinking water.

Space Ordnance Systems’ Mint Canyon and Sand Canyon plants--each a state Superfund site--where explosive wastes are being stored and where toxic chemicals have been found in ground water.

Southern Pacific Transportation Co. property in the 5300 block of Strohm Avenue in North Hollywood, where a plastics firm illegally dumped toxic chemicals in 1979.

Four water well fields underlying parts of North Hollywood, Burbank and Glendale, where unacceptable levels of TCE and perchloroethylene, or PCE, have been found in water. These groups of wells, operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the cities of Burbank and Glendale, and the Crescenta Valley County Water District, have been formally proposed as federal Superfund sites, which means the larger federal program could pay 90% of cleanup costs.

The $1.6-billion federal Superfund, run by the Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Superfund, supported by a voter-approved $100-million bond fund and run by the toxic substances control division of the state Department of Health Services, were created to expedite cleanup of toxic sites.

Under each program, designated sites are to be cleaned up by site operators or by those who generated or transported the wastes. But, if the responsible parties cannot be identified or are unwilling or unable to pay, cleanup work can be financed by the Superfunds and dumpers can be sued later for recovery of costs and damages.

Few Sites Cleaned

Although the Superfund program was intended to hasten corrective work at toxic waste dumps, Superfund sites are not assured of speedy cleanup, as frustrated lawmakers and dismayed environmentalists and citizens’ groups have learned. Despite Superfund’s dynamic name and high profile, it has managed to clean up few sites.

Of the 10 Valley-area sites, only the smallest stands a chance of being cleaned up by the end of this year. That is the Southern Pacific Transportation Co.’s property where 200 gallons of liquid waste were dumped by a plastics firm nearly six years ago.

But officials say engineering studies or cleanup work will soon be under way at several of the sites.

Officials say that in many cases, the scope of pollution at Superfund sites is so extensive or difficult to define that corrective work will take years.

The four San Fernando Valley well water fields, which provide about 15% of the area’s drinking water, are a case in point.

Well Test Results

Tests conducted from 1980 until 1983 showed that water from 47 of 109 wells in the area contained levels of TCE or PCE above state advisory standards. Both solvents have been widely used as industrial degreasers and dry-cleaning agents, and sloppy handling of the compounds by many industrial and commercial establishments could be to blame.

Low levels of other dangerous compounds, including benzene, chloroform and carbon tetrachloride, were found in a few of the wells.

The water utilities have taken more than a dozen of the most contaminated wells out of service, and have blended less tainted water with cleaner supplies to dilute contaminant levels.

But solving the problem involves the forbidding task of finding and purging plumes of tainted water that are sloshing beneath a huge expanse of the eastern San Fernando Valley.

The EPA has earmarked $1 million for an in-depth study to locate the tainted plumes, to determine their vertical and horizontal extent and to figure out how to intercept and filter the water en route to the wells.

Patti Cleary, an environmental scientist with the agency’s San Francisco regional office, said the study will begin this year but should take at least a year to complete, meaning it could easily be 1987 before cleanup can begin.

Laurent McReynolds, assistant chief water works engineer for the Department of Water and Power, said he believes it will be “at least a couple of years before anything is constructed, going the Superfund route, and really I feel that’s optimistic.�

Limited Study

In the meantime, McReynolds said, the DWP soon will contract with researchers at UCLA for a more limited study of ways to treat the water at the wellhead. He said the study may cost about $20,000.

High levels of TCE have been found in ground water beneath the Santa Susana Field Laboratory operated by Rockwell’s Rocketdyne Division. According to data Rockwell submitted to the state last year, samples of water from one on-site well showed TCE readings of 6,200 and 11,000 parts per billion.

State health officials say drinking water containing more than 5 parts per billion of TCE over a lifetime may pose a heightened cancer risk, although the water from the highly contaminated Rockwell well is not used for drinking.

Rockwell officials said they are working with the Regional Water Quality Control Board to develop a ground water pumping and filtering plan.

Alan Opel, director of engineering services for Space Ordnance Systems, said that late next month the company expects to present state health department officials with a plan for cleaning up tainted ground water and treating or disposing of polluted soil at its Mint Canyon and Sand Canyon plants. A preliminary estimate by an SOS contractor indicated that the work could cost more than $2 million.

Ground Water Tests

According to the contractor, low levels of toxic chemicals, including TCE and benzene, affect an estimated 3 million gallons of ground water under the Sand Canyon plant, while another 2 million to 16 million gallons of ground water are tainted at Mint Canyon. The company faces a number of individual and class-action suits from neighbors who contend that polluted water has reached or threatens to migrate to their wells.

Waste disposal problems at SOS were uncovered a year ago, when state and county officials raided the firm’s two plants.

Some other sites are on the Superfund list as the result of improper practices that officials knew about for years but took little action to halt.

Lubrication Co. of America is one such case. State health department files show that over a period of more than 10 years, state and county industrial waste inspectors uncovered repeated violations at the site on Lang Station Road just off the Antelope Valley Freeway, including intermittent runoff of oily wastes into the bed of the Santa Clara River, which is dry most of the time but feeds rainfall and runoff into ground water supplies.

In another instance, county inspectors discovered illegal dumping of refinery wastes in a canyon adjoining the property. The company also has been warned about storing oil and acid wastes in leaky drums. But the company was never taken to court to halt such violations.

Carl Sjoberg, chief industrial waste engineering inspector for the county Department of Public Works, said Lubrication Co. has “piddled away� at cleaning up the site “just enough to keep us off (its) back.�

Problems Called Cosmetic

Company President Ivey, 30, whose father started the firm, said he believes problems at the site are more cosmetic than threatening to the environment. “Oil has been spilled up there since 1956. On the surface it looks bad,� Ivey said.

Environmental officials say waste oil recyclers provide a vital service by cleaning up oil for reuse, thus reducing the amount that gets dumped into ditches, sewers and streams. But waste oil often is found to be spiked with more dangerous and exotic contaminants.

Waste solvents from auto repair shops, for example, may be dumped in used motor oil to avoid disposal fees. Or the waste oil may contain lead from automobile engines, or even PCBs--heat resistant compounds that were used in hydraulic fluids and electrical cooling oils.

“The problem with used oil is it’s never (just) used oil,� said Jim Smith, bond enforcement manager for the Southern California section of the health department’s toxic substances control division.

Although the Lubrication Co. site has long been contaminated by leaks and spills, state files suggest that the site has never been extensively sampled for the more exotic pollutants.

Last November, however, the toxic substances control division did limited testing, taking 15 samples of soil and sludge, according to records in the division’s Los Angeles office.

The laboratory results showed PCB levels of up to 16 parts per million in some samples, including a sample of soil near an evaporation pond. In August, the Federal Drug Administration lowered its acceptable tolerance levels of PCBs to 2 parts per million from 5 ppm.

Pollution by PCBs is of great concern to environmental officials because the synthetic compounds do not break down in nature and build up in the fat of animals and people. Exposure to PCBs can cause a skin rash, but there is heated scientific debate over their capacity to cause more serious health problems, such as cancer. Production of PCBs has been banned.

High Levels of Lead

Some of the samples at Lubrication Co. also showed high levels of lead.

The lab results, which state officials received in February, apparently were not forwarded to Ivey.

In a recent interview, Ivey expressed surprise at the discovery of PCBs, saying he heard nothing about it until questioned by a reporter. It “shocked the hell out of me,� he said.

He said that the firm had tried hard to avoid taking PCB-contaminated oil but that in the waste oil business, “you’re going to have that small chance you’re going to get some.�

State health officials have estimated it will cost nearly $500,000 to clean up the Lubrication Co. site, although the estimate was prepared before the recent testing.

Ivey said he thinks he can clean the site for about $400,000 and has applied for help under a new state loan program to help California businesses finance toxic cleanups ordered by the state.

The public will be the loser “if you attack the recyclers and the recyclers go out of business,� Ivey said.

“I would like Los Angeles to have a clean water supply for my grandchildren.�