New EPA Policy Raises Cost of McColl Cleanup

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ruled that extra precautions costing at least $5 million are needed at the landfill designated to receive the waste that is soon to be excavated from the McColl dump in Fullerton, federal officials said Wednesday.

The ruling is part of a policy decision affecting future “Superfund” hazardous waste cleanups nationwide, said Keith Takata, branch chief for the EPA’s Superfund office in San Francisco.

Takata said the decision was made by Lee Thomas, who has been nominated to replace William Ruckelshaus as EPA administrator. Thomas, he said, decided that any waste removed under the agency’s Superfund cleanup program must be deposited in landfills that meet stringent new regulations included in a recently reauthorized federal environmental protection law.

The McColl waste is scheduled to be excavated next month and trucked to the Casmalia Resources landfill in northern Santa Barbara County. The removal will not be delayed by the change in rules, Takata said.

The regulations require landfills built or expanded after May to be equipped with double synthetic liners, which would collect runoff from the hazardous waste before it leaches into the soil. Although the regulations were not aimed at existing landfills, such as Casmalia, Thomas required the improvements at any facility accepting waste from a Superfund cleanup, Takata said.

Takata said Thomas made the decision in reviewing the law’s effect on several cleanup cases, including McColl, referred to him after President Reagan reauthorized the legislation in November.

But Tom Bailey, a top state Department of Health Services toxics official, said the double liners may be an unnecessary precaution for McColl wastes.

“We can understand why he (Thomas) made the decision, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense at this time for the McColl waste,” said Bailey, program management chief for the department’s toxic substances control division. The McColl waste is mostly solidified--”almost a carbon, it’s so dry,” he said. “I could understand it if it was highly liquefied, if it might leach (into the soil). But that doesn’t apply to McColl.”

Cost of the McColl cleanup was initially projected at $21.5 million, with 90% coming from the Superfund and the rest from the state. Takata estimated that the new regulations would add $5 million to $6 million to the cost of the cleanup, and Bailey placed the figure at $7 million.

The new requirement is the latest wrinkle in the long-delayed cleanup of McColl’s World War II refinery acid waste, buried beneath a field and golf course in a Fullerton residential neighborhood.

According to Takata, the excavation can proceed on schedule because the unearthed waste can be stored in a temporary facility at Casmalia until the double liner is completed.

Bailey said it will take at least four weeks to construct the double liner.

Bailey said a chief unanswered question is who will pay for the improvements at Casmalia: the federal government alone or the state and federal governments combined. The state has agreed to pay 10% of the $21.5-million cleanup cost.

Takata said the state has been told it will have to pay 10% of the added cost as well.