Liquid Wastes Removed at Abandoned Oil Refinery : Pollution: Company removes 1.7 million gallons of hazardous material from abandoned Wright Terminals. The fuel-contaminated water will be treated before being discharged into the sewer system. Ground water is still contaminated.

More than 1.7 million gallons of hazardous liquid waste has been removed from the tanks of an abandoned oil refinery near the San Diego Freeway in Long Beach, but officials say it could take years to finish cleaning up the five-acre site.

In an agreement with state and local officials, the Paramount Petroleum Corp. finished removing the liquid waste--water contaminated with fuel--from the Wright Terminals Jan. 11, said Paramount Petroleum Vice President Bill Winters.

The firm will separate the petroleum products from the waste water for recycling. The water will then be channeled to county facilities, where it may have to be treated further before it is discharged into the local sewer system.

Removal of the liquid waste was considered the most pressing concern because most of it was in a huge tank that was leaking.

But the most hazardous waste remains at the site, where there is also soil and ground-water contamination. The abandoned refinery is near Cherry Avenue and Spring Street, surrounded by light industry and the 405 freeway.

“I would say this is the tip of the iceberg,” said Jim Ross, senior engineer for the state’s Regional Water Quality 6Control Board, which is overseeing the cleanup.

About 175,000 gallons of water laden with oil and cancer-causing PCBs remain in a single tank. The waste will probably have to be removed by a hazardous-waste hauler.

The other remaining waste includes oil sludge at the bottom of a storage tank; about 250 55-gallon drums, some of which contain hazardous waste, and several small piles of oil-tainted soil, Ross said.

In addition, the ground at the site is tainted, and past tests have indicated there is at least some ground-water contamination to a depth of 85 feet, officials said. More testing is needed to determine the extent of contamination.

But state and local officials say they do not know who is going to pay for such testing, or to clean up the site.

The former Western Oil Refinery was last operated as a bulk-fuel storage and blending terminal by the Las Vegas-based Wright Cos., which went into bankruptcy and was liquidated, said bankruptcy trustee Tom Grimmett.

Grimmett said all assets would go to the main creditor of Wright Cos., and there would be no money for the cleanup.

A bankruptcy judge declared the site abandoned last May.

Officials hope they can find a developer who would be willing to pay for the cleanup in order to build on the site. But Ross predicted that any cleanup is “several years” away.

The California Environmental Protection Agency took control of the site last May, citing a threat of explosion from fumes emanating from storage tanks. CalEPA maintained a flare at the site to burn off the fumes.

But the agency pulled out last August after new tests indicated that there was little danger of explosion even if the flare were extinguished. In all, the state spent more than $100,000, spokesman Allan Hirsch said.

A breakthrough in the cleanup effort came last September when state and local officials announced that they had reached an agreement with Paramount Petroleum to remove the fuel-tainted water from more than 20 storage tanks on the site.

Under the agreement, Paramount Petroleum absorbed the cost of removing and recycling the waste. Winters estimated that it will cost Paramount Petroleum $35,000 to $50,000. But Winters said he will not know the exact cost until after the waste is processed, which will take about a month.

In exchange, the South Coast Air Quality Management District forgave about $200,000 in fines that were to be levied against Paramount Petroleum for excessive emissions and odors, AQMD spokeswoman Paula Levy said.

The AQMD is involved in the Wright Terminals cleanup because of the potential for toxic air pollution. Benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, was one of the substances detected in the fumes from the tanks.

A Jan. 7 health study indicated that fumes from the one tank that still contains waste do not pose a significant risk to the closest residents, who live more than a quarter of a mile from the old refinery, Levy said.