Measure on Car-Shredding Wastes Leaves Questions

SACRAMENTO —  Even though Gov. George Deukmejian has signed new legislation governing its disposal, a gigantic pile of illegally stored hazardous wastes in Anaheim continues to grow, along with uncertainty over what will become of it.

When her legislation was approved earlier this year, Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) hoped it would end a debate over the supposed dangers--and procedures for dumping--a metal-laden dust created when junked automobiles are run through shredders to make re-usable steel.

But the problem has proven to be more complex than the law’s critics or supporters expected.

The industry, which wants to dispose of the shredder wastes cheaply, will have to bear considerable expense to do so. Also, it is unlikely that any of the materials are going to be dumped in Orange County.

Meanwhile, Anaheim and Orange County officials are losing patience as the pile of shredder waste stored on the 32-acre compound of Orange County Steel Salvage--the only auto shredder in the county--has grown by some estimates to 50,000 tons.

“That shredder waste has to be removed from that property. All of it,” said John Poole, code enforcement supervisor for the City of Anaheim. “I know he (owner George Adams Jr.) has had some problems, but that, basically, is his problem.”

Adams, however, maintains that he has no place to take the materials--a complaint that underscores the concerns over Bergeson’s legislation.

The measure, not yet fully implemented, will allow shredders to dump their dusty residue into landfills intended for ordinary household garbage. But it does not require landfill operators to accept the materials, nor does it challenge the authority of regional water-quality officials to impose special safeguards against contaminating underground water tables with the materials.

Indeed, Bergeson, trying to address concerns of environmentalists as well as the auto shredders, crafted a measure that some skeptics say will not resolve the problem.

“What are my choices?” asked Adams. “I can shut down and go out of business or I can keep going . . . . If they want to haul me to jail, let them haul me to jail.”

At the heart of the dispute is the so-called shredder waste which the scrap metal industry has nicknamed “fluff.” California is the only state which has labeled the material as hazardous.

But the state’s approach to rival shredding-business firms has been inconsistent.

In the 20 months since state health officials began insisting that shredder waste be stored, handled and disposed of like hazardous materials, for example, some shredding firms in Los Angeles County have spent millions of dollars hauling their waste to an Indian reservation in Arizona.

Those firms complain bitterly that it is unfair for them to be facing expensive and vigorous enforcement by state and local officials, while Adams has been stockpiling a large quantity of the material in the Anaheim facility.

Although there have been fires at one of the Los Angeles County facilities that stored shredder wastes, state health officials have been hard-pressed to explain their enforcement policy. Orange County and Anaheim officials, saying they have waited for state health officials to take the initiative, agree that they have done little to enforce the law.

Anaheim took Adams to court in May, but only to force him to keep his shredder-waste stockpile lower than the 15-foot-high fence surrounding the material. Last year, Orange County environmental health officials sent the firm a “notice of violation” regarding its storage of the materials, but no county citations have been issued.

“If anything, we are guilty of not following through and taking some legal action,” said Bob Merryman, Orange County’s environmental health director.

But as long as the state seemed confused about what should be done, “it just wasn’t logical” for the county to take the initiative in dealing with the problem, he added.

And there have been no clear signals from Sacramento, amid scientific disagreements over the “fluff” and conflicting concerns of various state agencies.

Top officials of the state Department of Health Services now say that, despite quantities of lead and other metals, shredder wastes are not as dangerous as once feared. They believe the materials can be safely dumped into landfills intended for ordinary household garbage.

These officials contend that the material’s lead content, which prompted its hazardous classification in the first place, is marginally unacceptable, at best. They question whether shredder wastes should have ever been classified as hazardous.

However, state and regional water-quality officials have not been so easily convinced.

Bergeson’s measure, introduced at the urging of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, permits regional water-quality agencies to determine which landfills can accept the waste materials, and preserves their authority to require special handling of it.

Frank Bowerman, the county’s waste-management chief, said the new law does not provide him and other county officials with any new information to reassure the public that the material is not dangerous. Under the circumstances, Bowerman said, he still does not want it deposited in any of the four Orange County-operated landfills.

“This bill says very clearly that it (shredder waste) is ‘nonhazardous for purposes of disposal,’ ” Bowerman observed. “But it is generated as hazardous, it is stored as hazardous, it is transported as hazardous (material). It only becomes nonhazardous when it reaches its disposal location.”

“Now, that’s a mystery,” Bowerman declared.

Meanwhile, regional water board officials in the area have identified four potential landfill disposal sites for the materials, none of them in Orange County.

In Riverside County, officials are looking at the county-operated Badlands and Lambs Canyon landfills. In San Diego County, officials are considering county-operated Otay landfill and the city-run Miramar facility.

The Prima Deshecha landfill near San Clemente in Orange County, once considered a likely disposal site, has been eliminated because “the ground water is pretty good in that area,” said David Barker, an engineer with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, which has jurisdiction over the site.

Final decisions by the Regional Water Quality Control Boards in both the Santa Ana and San Diego regions on where to deposit the waste materials are expected in mid-December, just ahead of a deadline imposed by Bergeson’s bill.

Staff officials for both boards said they want to impose safeguards, which would include keeping the shredder wastes in a separate area of the landfills and encasing the material in impermeable clay.

“We are not going to let it be put into landfills as nonhazardous wastes,” Barker said.

Some landfill operators such as Bowerman say that such safeguards would, in effect, require the shredder waste to be handled as a hazardous material, even if it is not so labeled. Other officials say the substantial costs for such special handling must be borne by the industry, not taxpayers.

Despite the confusion, Adams believes that Bergeson’s bill is a step in the right direction and the Orange County businessman indicated that he may seek new legislation to clarify the issue next year. But he may be running out of time.

State health officials, for example, took new samples at Adams’ facility last month to conduct tests on the metal content of the shredder wastes and their potential for seeping into underground water tables.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, concerned about environmental damage that may have been caused by Adams’ stockpile, is conducting separate tests based on the same soil samples to see if rainfall has caused metals in the shredder waste to seep into soil at or near the Anaheim facility. Results are expected next week.

If it is found that there has been any seepage at all, water board Executive Officer Jim Bennett says that it will reaffirm his fear that the so-called “leeching” could be much worse under acidic conditions in landfills.

Orange County health officials say they will await the findings of all the tests, so that state officials can take the lead in the enforcement efforts.

But Merryman, the county’s environmental health director, conceded that “we’re the ones screaming the loudest.” He pointed out that the pile of hazardous wastes at Adams’ facility keeps “getting taller and taller.”

In Anaheim, city enforcement supervisor Poole said that Adams will have to move at least some of the fluff even before the test results are in, because a conditional use permit on four of Adams’ 32 acres, where some of the waste is stored, expires next week. And once the results are in, Poole added, all the material has to go.

Where will Adams take the shredder waste?

That, said Poole, “is his problem as a business person.”