COUNTYWIDE : Law Makes Him a Victim a 2nd Time

On the morning of last Oct. 2, Jorge Bernal walked into his tiny Huntington Beach shoe repair shop to discover seven containers of gasoline on the floor and more gas splashed on the walls, tables and equipment.

Police and fire officials, suspecting a firebomb attempt, responded. Within a few days, Bernal received a bomb threat, and the FBI has since been investigating that letter.

Two weeks later, Bernal received a mailing he says he found even more unsettling: a $1,800 bill for the emergency cleanup cost.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said recently. “They said I have to pay to clean up the mess. I said they should wait until the police find out who did it.

“And all they did was pick up the cans. My wife and I cleaned up the place.”

Bernal, angered at being billed for a crime in which he was the victim, has refused to pay. But unless investigators find the person who did it, Bernal is liable for the costs under state law, fire officials said.

Since 1986, the Legislature has enacted a series of bills relating to hazardous-materials cleanups, allowing local agencies to charge “responsible parties” for such spills, whether accidental or intentional. And if the villain can’t be found, the property owner is the responsible party, officials said.

“The burden (of payment) used to just fall on the city,” Huntington Beach Fire Marshal James Vincent said. But, as cities’ costs of cleaning up these spills have mounted--Huntington Beach was paying about $50,000 per month, Vincent said--more of them have been passing on the bill to whoever is deemed “responsible.”

So Bernal was billed by the Hazardous Materials Joint Powers Authority, of which the Huntington Beach Fire Department is a member, along with fire departments of Newport Beach, Orange County, Anaheim and Santa Ana.

Of the $150,000 in cleanup bills the authority typically sends out each month, about 20% goes to innocent property owners, estimated William Van Horn, the authority’s office administrator.

“It happens quite frequently, especially in small industrial buildings and apartments,” he said.

Depending on the size and nature of the spill, owners may be charged between $250 and “several thousand dollars,” Van Horn said.

Not surprisingly, he said he often fields calls from property owners who are “very upset” at the bill.

“We try to handle these situations as delicately as possible,” he said. “We understand that the costs are high, and we try to work with these people however we can.”

In an effort to help owners who discover hazardous spills on their property, the county recently opened its first public hazardous-waste site in Anaheim, where anyone may dispose of paint, oil, chemicals and other hazardous materials, free of charge.

A second such site is due to open this month in Huntington Beach, and three others are tentatively planned to be located elsewhere in the county, Van Horn said.

“The county of Orange has been a leader in the state in setting up . . . these sites,” he said. “And that’s helped a lot in dealing with illegal dumping.”