Cautious Optimism Over Imperial County Site : Landfill Would Welcome Auto-Shredder Waste

SACRAMENTO —  Southern California automobile shredders, frustrated by a persistent disposal problem and baffled by a multifaceted bureaucracy that cannot solve it, received a ray of hope for a solution in their Christmas mail.

Operators of a large landfill in the Imperial County desert sent out letters saying they have more than enough room to accept the more than 8,000 tons of shredder residue that the five Southern California auto shredding firms generate monthly.

What’s more, the letters suggested that the dusty, metal-laden residue, which has been officially labeled hazardous in California since 1982, can be dumped at the privately run, 120-acre landfill east of Imperial more economically than it can be hauled out of state or out of the country.

Regional water quality officials say the Imperial County landfill, unlike others that have refused to accept the waste material that is created when junked automobiles are run through shredders to make reusable steel, sits atop an extremely salty underground water table that could not be used for irrigation or drinking.

“They have plenty of room and (the landfill) has a clay bottom,” added garbage industry lobbyist Hy Weitzman, who has contacted the five shredders on behalf of the Imperial County Sanitation Co. “They are ideal.”

Automobile shredders, including Pacific Steel in National City, say they are cautiously interested in the proposal.

For more than a year, shredders in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties have been stockpiling their waste, hauling it to Arizona or Mexico, or dumping it illegally. And little has changed despite emergency legislation by state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) that was signed into law last year.

Bergeson’s bill made it legal to dump shredder waste into Class III landfills, those intended for ordinary household garbage. State health officials say such landfills are the safest and most sensible places to dispose of the materials.

But the bill neither forced landfill operators to accept the material nor limited the authority of regional water quality agencies to require special handling of it.

Last month, Regional Water Quality Control boards in San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Ana designated a number of dumping sites that could accept auto shredder waste. But to protect against potential ground water contamination, all required that the material be segregated from other garbage at the dump and encased in an impermeable clay liner.

Because of those requirements, most landfills have refused to accept the waste.

But Arthur Swajian, executive officer of the Colorado River Basin Regional Water Quality Control Board, said less stringent controls may be required for the Imperial County site.

“Those others have usable ground water to protect,” Swajian said. “The ground water . . . in Imperial County . . . is rotten.”

Swajian said no final decisions have been reached. He said his agency still may require that the shredder waste be segregated, but the natural clay liner of the firm’s landfill may suffice.

Once the landfill operator’s plans for accepting shredder waste are final, “our man will go down and look it over,” Swajian said.

Weitzman, who represents the California Refuse Council, said he will try to call a meeting of Southern California automobile shredders during the next few weeks.

The letters that went out to the firms before Christmas estimated that they could dump their shredder waste at the Imperial County site for “right around $30 a ton,” including transportation, he said.

Although that is about six times more expensive than the statewide average for dumping ordinary household garbage, it is about 29% cheaper than two Los Angeles County firms are spending now to haul their waste to an Indian reservation near Parker, Ariz.

Thousands of tons of the wastes have been stored at facilities in Anaheim and National City while operators awaited an economical means of disposal.

Shredders say privately that the Imperial County landfill sounds promising, but they are concerned about long-range price guarantees. They fear the operators might raise so-called tipping fees later, after the firms have broken off existing contractual relationships, because the Imperial County landfill is the only one in Southern California eager to accept shredder waste.

“You can’t blame them,” said Arthur Bagdasarian, owner of the Imperial County landfill, about the coastal landfill operators. “They have something at least tentatively going right now. I can understand that.”

Bagdasarian, who has rubbish collection contracts in Riverside and Los Angeles counties as well, said his own long-range concerns are about liability should there be a change in state and federal laws or regulatory attitudes.

“You saw what happened to Stringfellow,” he said. “ . . . Who knows how the state and the (Federal Environmental Protection Agency) are going to look at it five years from now.”

Bagdasarian said if he reaches agreement with the shredders, he hopes they will be willing to share long-range liability for the site.

“If anybody goes down the tube on that parcel, it is not going to be just the landfill owner.”