Bills for Toxic Waste Cleanup Contested

Ernest Carlson was a young doctor when he purchased an auto parts store on Ventura Avenue to bring in extra cash for his growing family.

Two decades later federal officials ordered him to remove underground gas tanks on his property, where a service station once stood. He paid $116,000 to have 15 truckloads of dirt hauled to a toxic-waste dump in northern Santa Barbara County.

“Then I put it all behind me,” said Carlson, now 77 and retired in Santa Paula. “I chalked it off as a bad experience and was glad it was all over.”

But it was not. A few months ago Carlson received a threatening notice from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This time the government wanted him to pay to clean up the Casmalia hazardous-waste landfill.

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Carlson, along with thousands of others who used the dump, now finds himself paying a penalty for doing the right thing.

Altogether, the 10,000 former customers who collectively dumped more than 4 billion pounds of toxic waste at the facility must pay $399 million to clean it up.

The ex-customers are lumped into two groups.

The bigger customers, such as Oxnard, will receive ongoing bills for the cleanup while smaller clients, such as Carlson, will be billed only once.

“It’s really a settlement offer” for the smaller customers, EPA official Roy Herzig said. “The cash payment releases them from all future liability at the site.”

Oxnard, which shipped more than 2.82 million pounds of waste to the site, was among the top 50 customers of Casmalia. The local city is negotiating its portion of the $66-million cost of the initial cleanup work, said Steve Onstott, an attorney representing Oxnard.

For many of the 70 affected businesses and public agencies in Ventura County, the cleanup fee has been a great financial hardship. The local bills--which, excluding Oxnard, range from a few hundred dollars to $408,762--total $5.3 million.

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Carlson’s bill totaled $116,601, roughly the same amount he paid in the first place. And he has no idea how he will pay it.

“This has created a lot of anxiety for me and my family,” said Carlson, who sold his auto parts store nine years ago. “I’m getting up in years. I’ll be 78 next month. I’m enjoying good health at this age, but I don’t want to leave it up to my wife and children to fight this battle when I’m gone.”

Government agencies also say the cleanup costs have been a financial strain.

While Santa Paula was billed $68,000 and Thousand Oaks $23,030, Ventura County was ordered to pay $338,000.

County attorneys, however, have so far been able to lower that amount to $170,000, assistant county counsel Antonette Cordero said.

“We think we have some good arguments proving why it should be lower still,” Cordero said.

The dump was opened in 1973 and shut down in 1989 after bitter community protest. Ever since, the EPA has taken pains to assure the small town of Casmalia and surrounding communities that the landfill poses no future harm to the air and drinking water.

Under federal law, former customers must pay to clean up the landfill, which is leaking toxics, including cadmium, nickel and the solvents trichloroethylene and 1,1,1-trichloreothane, most of which are considered carcinogenic.

Of the second-tier waste generators statewide, 170 have banded together to fight the cleanup fee. They have hired a Los Angeles law firm, whose attorneys are attempting to get the fee lowered.

Supra Alloys in Camarillo is one of 18 Ventura County companies that joined the fight. The company, which provides titanium materials to aerospace and recreation firms, received a bill of nearly $200,000.

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“This is not fair,” said Joe Esseff, the company’s executive vice president. “There is no way we can let this thing go.”

The EPA oversaw the dump’s operation, and his company had no reason to believe it was not in proper working order, Esseff said.

“They were allowing waste to be taken there,” Esseff said. “It was [due to] their inefficiency that this happened. They failed to adhere to their own standard. So why are we being told we have to pay?”

His 35-employee company cannot afford the fee, he said.

“We could probably struggle and stay in business, but it would put us in a cash crunch for a long time.”

Federal officials said those who generated the toxic waste must be held liable. They said asking each customer to pay 18 cents for each pound of waste dumped there was fair.

“If a party says their shipments were not contaminated and they can prove it with documents, there’s a possibility they won’t have to pay the fee,” EPA official Kathy Katlan said.

“We’re listening to the groups,” the EPA’s Herzig added. “If they can prove a great financial hardship, they can get their fees lowered.”

Tom Hopps, president of Rancho Energy Corp. in Ventura, hopes Herzig’s words are true. He said his $5,063 bill would be a blow to his one-man geological consulting firm.

“Rancho Energy has very limited assets,” Hopps said. “We paid a licensed facility to have the material disposed of in good faith. It just seems wrong. It seems unconstitutional.”

Neale McNutt, president of Santa Clara Chemical Co. in Oxnard, also hopes his $214,034 fee is lowered.

“We did all the right things,” said McNutt, whose 21-employee company sells pesticides. “Now we’re being punished for it.”