Inability to Comply With U.S. Regulations Cited : Half of State’s Toxic Dumps May Be Shut

Officials in California know what to expect when federal regulations on toxic dumps take effect Friday. They estimate that 50 of the state’s 100 dumps will have to close for failure to monitor pollution in surrounding ground water or to demonstrate ability to pay for possible cleanups. Most of the 50 have already signaled their intention to close.

“There will be some, but not too many, that need to (close) and won’t,” said Philip Bobel, chief of waste management programs in the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco office.

But down the road, Bobel expects a series of disputes with operators of toxic dumps over the adequacy of wells they have dug to monitor ground water. “In almost all cases, we get into protracted arguments with the companies as to how many wells there should be and where they should be,” Bobel said.

Wells Aren’t Cheap

Digging those wells isn’t cheap. San Francisco’s Chemwest Industries is spending more than $150,000 to dig the three wells required by the EPA, Operations Manager Mack Atkinson said.

Chemwest stores diluted hydrochloric acid, used in the manufacture of ferric chloride, in a surface impoundment facility with a half-inch-thick plastic lining. The EPA wants to be sure that none of the acid seeps through the lining and contaminates ground water.

“The requirement in our case was to drill three monitoring wells down to the underground water level so that samples of that water can be tested regularly,” Atkinson said. “Ground water in our area is 450 to 500 feet below the surface.

“The biggest problem was that there is such a rush by firms trying to meet the deadline that it was difficult to obtain drilling equipment to do the job in time. But we found it and began drilling two months ago. We’re just finishing the last of the three wells.

Difference in Conditions

“It’s expensive. Each well has cost us about $50,000, so we’ll have spent more than $150,000 by the time we’ve finished.”

Firms in the western United States trying to meet the EPA’s specifications for monitoring wells point to a significant difference between conditions here and in the eastern part of the country. Such wells must be sunk to the underground water level. In the East, that is often only 10 or 20 feet below ground. In the West, underground water levels often are hundreds of feet below the surface, increasing the cost of drilling such wells.

“This is a good law, and we feel comfortable that we can meet all the requirements by the Nov. 8 deadline,” Atkinson said. “We’re complying with the law under penalty of perjury, so there’s a lot of incentive to do it correctly.”

Not all firms are so sure that they will meet the standards, and some that know they cannot are preparing to close their facilities.

‘Fortune 500’ Firm

Tosco Corp. of Santa Monica is a “Fortune 500” company that refines crude oil into gasoline and diesel fuel in California. Last fiscal year, Tosco had sales of $1.9 billion, but it has only one refinery, near Martinez on the east coast of San Francisco Bay, and it is going to close its nearby waste facility.

Tosco’s problem in meeting EPA requirements is not with the technical end of monitoring the wastes but with providing the needed financial guarantees, spokesman Bob Sears said. Under this requirement, a company operating a waste disposal facility has to show that it can guarantee the financing that would be required to close the facility or to pay for any cleanup that might have to be done as a result of its operations.

“We had announced our intention earlier this year of closing our waste facility,” Sears said. “We hadn’t used it for three or four years, anyway. Other oil companies are big enough to offer their own financial guarantees. We are not on that scale. We don’t have the financial flexibility that a big integrated oil company has. The alternative to that would be to obtain insurance, but we’ve tried and so far have not been able to obtain it. As you can imagine, finding this kind of insurance is very difficult.”

Sears said Tosco is not in the business of disposing of hazardous waste. “But in any oil processing business, byproducts are created that would be deemed hazardous waste under the EPA regulations.

“We’re keeping the oil refinery in operation, of course, but we have to close the waste facility by Nov. 8. We’ll keep on sending our waste to a firm that specializes in treating it.”