Cleanup Nears End; Anxiety Lingers

Gloria Price has fought to clean up the asbestos and toxic wastes at her Paradise Hills home ever since the waste was found in her back yard 15 months ago.

The cleanup, which began six weeks ago at her house and three others, is nearing an end, and Price moved back into her Edgewater Street residence last week after the state Department of Health Services told her it was safe to do so.

But she has not stopped fighting.

“They said the health hazard was gone,” Price said, but when asked if she believes the house is safe, she hesitates.

“As long as nobody digs in their yards and as long as the topsoil is not broken” it should be OK, she said.

That doesn’t satisfy Price. Soil samples taken by San Diego County showed contamination as far down as 4 1/2 feet, but the $380,000 cleanup, paid for by the state, went only 2 feet down in most places.

“What we’re doing right now is waiting for verification samples to tell us whether we got all” of the toxic waste, said Wael Ibrahim of the state Department of Health Services. The results are due next week.

“It’s always possible that we didn’t get some,” Ibrahim said, adding that the toxins involved are not very mobile and that the ground water is not likely to be tainted, since it lies more than 100 feet farther down.

The waste, which includes large amounts of zinc, copper and lead, was discovered when Price contracted to have a pool installed in her back yard in October, 1988. She, her daughter and her granddaughter had lived there less than a week when the toxins were found in the hole where the pool was to be placed, she said.

The county’s hazardous-materials division says the cleanup is adequate as long as the earth beneath the house is not disturbed.

“From what our tests show, even if she put in a swimming pool, I don’t believe that would be a problem,” said Dan Avera, chief of hazardous-materials management. “As long as nobody excavates directly underneath the house, there won’t be a problem.”

Price is suing the Navy, among other groups, for a complete cleanup, which she says would require tearing down the house and removing the waste underneath. However, Ibrahim said the ground under the house can be capped with cement if unhealthy levels of asbestos and metals are found, and that destruction of the house is unnecessary.

Price believes the Navy was responsible for dumping the toxics more than 50 years ago, and she says she has the artifacts to prove it.

Among the items found in her back yard were broken bowls and plates and a butter knife, which Price said came from a Navy mess hall. A porthole was also found.

“We know that the Navy was the depositor,” Price said, holding a broken coffee cup she says the Navy buried along with slabs of asbestos.

Price’s lawyer, John Reaves, said he has at least “two really good witnesses” who say the Navy used the area as a dump in the 1930s.

The Navy has denied the allegations.

“We have reviewed all of our files going back to the times that supposedly something had been dumped there, and there was nothing at all in our records to indicate that the Navy had a dump site or used a dump site there to dispose of anything,” said Cmdr. Doug Shamp, a Navy spokesman. “And that’s where it stands now.”

“Sure, a Navy coffee cup may have been found, but on the other hand, that certainly isn’t a whole lot of the Navy,” he said.

Price, who works at North Island Naval Air Station, is also asking for compensatory and punitive damages from the Navy, the builder of the house, and Sylvan Pools, the contractor that dug the hole for the pool. Price, who says she found out about the toxins from the landfill where the dirt was dumped, maintains that Sylvan was negligent in not telling her. Sylvan says it, and not the landfill, notified her.

“I feel that there are responsible parties out there, and they should do what they are responsible for doing,” Price said. “They should be held responsible to clean up their waste.”

Although Price faces years of litigation, she is relieved that she has been able to move back into her home.

“I am really happy that it’s coming to an end, at least this part,” said Price, who hopes that, weather permitting, the cleanup will be finished within a week.

For 15 months, Price has lived in her twin sister’s three-bedroom house in Spring Valley, with as many as 13 other relatives. “We were hanging off the rafters,” she said.

“It’s difficult trying to raise a 1-year-old granddaughter in a house that’s not ‘babytized,’ ” Price said. “The last two years have been something I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

Price’s mother, who occupied the house before she did, died two months before the waste was discovered. Her home was broken into four times after she moved out, she said.

Although the cleanup is nearly complete, Price said her anxiety over the contamination is not likely to go away soon. The effects of exposure to such toxic wastes are not readily apparent and can take years to manifest themselves, she said. She is particularly concerned about the effects on her granddaughter, Melissa, now 2.

“I’m real scared about what she was exposed to, because (before the wastes were discovered) we thought that this was a great adventure, so we took the kids outside and let them watch them dig up the pool and everything,” Price said. “We had to give them baths, they had all this dirt all over them and everything, and now we know that it was completely contaminated. And so, for the next 30 years, I have to worry about who I’ve exposed this to.”

Price said she, her daughter Bethaney and granddaughter have already begun a health program, including yearly chest X-rays, to watch for problems such as cancer and nerve damage.

Meanwhile, as landscapers prepare to replant the shrubs and grass in her back yard, Price still worries about what may lie 4 feet under, and prays that it stays there.