Superfund Nomination an Error, State Says : Project on Site Near Monterey Park Landfill Jeopardized, City Fears

MONTEREY PARK —  State officials say they made a mistake when they included 45 acres near a closed Monterey Park landfill in their nominations for the federal Superfund list to qualify for aid in cleaning up hazardous waste sites.

But some federal officials believe that the 45 acres belong there anyway.

A state Department of Health Services administrator said his department had not intended to include the 45 acres when it nominated the 135-acre Operating Industries landfill for the Superfund list in 1982.

Now the state agency has joined concerned Monterey Park officials in trying to rectify the situation, which threatens to scuttle the $60-million Southeast Development Project that city officials say will create 3,000 jobs and produce $1 million a year in city sales tax revenue.

However, EPA officials in San Francisco say they have found legitimate grounds for including the full 180 acres on a new Superfund list scheduled to be compiled within the next few months, because the 45 acres in question had also been a dump site and they are not sure what is buried there.

Washington Must Act

Keeping the 45 acres off the list will require the EPA in Washington to overrule the regional office in San Francisco.

In an effort to save the commercial project, Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park); Monterey Park Mayor Rudy Peralta; Thomas Warriner, deputy secretary of the state Health and Welfare Agency, and other city and state officials met last month with high-level EPA administrators in Washington to discuss deletion of the site. City Manager Lloyd de Llamas said EPA officials have promised a decision soon.

State and federal officials agree that the nearby Operating Industries landfill, which accepted hazardous waste, should be on the list because the site needs to be cleaned up to prevent health hazards.

However, Keith Takata, EPA branch chief in San Francisco, said the 45-acre parcel merits inclusion, too. “We submitted the whole thing, and we did it quite consciously,” Takata said.

Until the Pomona Freeway was built in the 1960s, Takata noted, the 45 acres and the adjacent 135-acre Operating Industries landfill were one property.

Used as City Dump

City officials say the 45-acre parcel, owned by an affiliate of Operating Industries, was used as a municipal dump from 1948 to 1952 and never received hazardous materials. State officials contend that while there may be problems at the site, they are not serious enough to qualify for the Superfund list.

The disputed site, which lies on the north side of the Pomona Freeway at Greenwood Avenue, contains an auto salvage yard, an asphalt recycling plant and a storage area for trash trucks.

The landfill, which lies across the freeway, was closed by the owners in 1984 amid complaints from nearby residents about odors and health threats.

State and city officials said they began working with proposed plans for the 45 acres without realizing that the site was included in the state’s request for federal Superfund aid.

State health officials said they have analyzed the 45-acre parcel and believe that there are no health reasons for delaying sale of the property to a developer, Transpacific Development Co. of Torrance. Transpacific wants to build five auto dealerships, a cluster of six-story office buildings and several retail shops and restaurants in what the city has labeled the Southeast Development Project. The project calls for construction of 80,000 square feet of retail space and 800,000 square feet of offices.

May Abandon Project

Richard Plummer, director of acquisitions for Transpacific Development Co., said his company has been formulating plans for the property for 18 months but will abandon the project if EPA puts it on the final Superfund list. Plummer said the listing will create too many liability problems.

“We’ve lost a lot of our enthusiasm for the site,” Plummer said. “Very few developers wanted to touch this. We decided to try.”

In their meeting last month, state and city representatives gave EPA officials a letter from Angelo Bellomo, who heads the state health department’s toxic cleanup program in Southern California, stating that the state erred in including the 45 acres with the landfill. Bellomo said that “any incidental pockets of hazardous material” on the 45 acres could be cleaned up by the property owner and that the site does not contain the sort of contaminants found in the landfill itself.

Bellomo also said that including the 45 acres on the Superfund list will undo a state-orchestrated cleanup agreement in which $6 million to $7 million from the sale of the land to Transpacific Development Co. will go to a trust to clean up the Operating Industries landfill.

If the property cannot be sold because of the Superfund listing, Bellomo said, cleanup plans would suffer, and Operating Industries Inc. “will probably declare bankruptcy,” leaving the entire cleanup cost to federal and state agencies.

Bankruptcy Among Options

Dan Spradlin, attorney for Operating Industries Inc., said the company, which derived most of its revenue from the landfill until its closure, owes many creditors and must explore its options, including bankruptcy.

Spradlin said the landfill qualified for Superfund listing because of vinyl chloride emissions, which he said are now under control, but there was never any reason to include the 45 acres across the freeway. “There is no data at all to justify it,” he said.

Takata said the 45-acre parcel is “probably less dirty” than the landfill, but no one can say with certainty what is buried there. He said a two-year investigation is needed to determine the extent of the contamination.

Takata said he thinks the property can be sold and developed even if it is included on the Superfund list. He said his office is willing to work out arrangements that would limit the liability of the buyer.

The cost of cleaning up the landfill is going to be high, and $7 million “probably will not go very far,” Takata said, but he added that obtaining the money through the sale of the 45-acre parcel is still a legitimate objective. City officials said they have heard landfill cleanup estimates of $25 million to $30 million, but Takata said that although no one can predict the cost at this point, those estimates “are probably low.”

Leachate Treatment

Further complicating the issue is the EPA’s desire to build a plant to treat the leachate created from liquid waste and the decomposition of solid waste in the landfill. The leachate, which could be disposed of in the sewer system after treatment, is now hauled from the landfill to a plant in Vernon.

However, De Llamas said the city fears that the EPA will import leachate from other dumps for treatment as the amount of leachate produced in the Monterey Park landfill declines. Takata said he is willing to give assurances in writing that the treatment plant will be dismantled and moved elsewhere once it is no longer needed in Monterey Park.

The City Council approved the leachate treatment proposal a year ago on the assumption that the plant will be built next to a methane gas recovery plant in a corner of the landfill. Takata said no site has been selected, but the instability of the soil on the landfill itself will make it difficult to put the leachate plant there.

EPA officials have talked about building the plant on 10 of the 45 acres. But city officials and the developer said the commercial project will not be economically feasible if part of the 45 acres must be set aside for a leachate treatment plant.

The project already carries with it a number of extra costs, including the removal of 111,000 cubic yards of trash and 2,100 cubic yards of soil with a high lead content, apparently the result of the disposal of paint in household trash.

In addition, the project involves the construction of freeway on-ramps and off-ramps at Greenwood Avenue, providing access to the 45-acre parcel. The ramps and the trash removal would be financed by $7 million from the city redevelopment agency, $4 million from the developer and $1 million from the state.

Plummer of Transpacific Development said that if the federal Superfund listing roadblock is removed, work on the freeway ramps could begin in six months and be completed in two years. The ramps must be built before the commercial development can proceed, in order to improve access to the property, he said.