Residents Protest Cleanup Delays : McColl dump: EPA officials have a meeting to discuss the reasons why efforts to deal with the site’s toxic waste have moved so slowly.

FULLERTON —  More than 200 people crowded into a meeting with federal Environmental Protection Agency officials Monday night to protest delays in efforts to clean up the McColl toxic waste dump.

The meeting was held several hours after community groups that had favored EPA plans to dig up and burn the soil contaminated by an estimated 150,000 tons of World War II aviation fuel announced support for an alternative plan by the oil companies to clean up the dump.

McColl, Orange County’s worst toxic waste site, has been on the nation’s Superfund list of toxic waste sites since 1983. Millions of dollars have been spent to study and test the site, but no wastes have been removed.

The EPA cleaning proposal had been favored by community activists. But after having waited 11 years for something to be done, and after hearing in March that the EPA would delay a decision on cleaning up the dump until the end of 1993, residents have lined up behind a proposal by the five oil companies believed responsible for dumping the wastes to seal most of the wastes underground.

“I firmly believe the time has run out for the agencies,” said Betty Porras, until recently the community activist most ardently in favor of the EPA plan, at a news conference called by the oil companies. “I’ve got news for the EPA: It’s too late, and you blew it.”

The oil companies--Atlantic Richfield Co., Shell Oil Co., Union Oil Co. of California, Texaco Refining and Marketing Inc. and Phillips Petroleum Co.--have for years proposed that the wastes at McColl be left there, sealed under watertight layers of plastic.

The companies announced Monday that they would be willing to change their plans to seal in all of the wastes. Bill Duchie, a representative of Shell Oil, said the companies are now willing to remove as much as half the toxic waste at their expense before sealing off the site.

Previously, Porras had said the oil companies’ proposal to seal off the wastes was unacceptable. On Monday, however, she criticized the EPA for having failed to move quickly and said she and nearly all her neighbors now back the oil companies’ $90-million plan.

Among the supporters for the oil companies’ plan are members of the Fullerton Hills Community Assn., which presented the EPA with a petition signed by 124 residents who back the oil companies’ proposal.

The EPA had been expected to announce its proposal for a cleanup plan last March. But the agency said that new environmental laws and new information from recent testing at McColl forced a reevaluation of all alternatives. The purpose of the meeting in Fullerton Monday night was to explain the reasons for the delay to residents.

Community acceptance of any cleanup is one of the criteria the agency must take into account, EPA spokesman Terry Wilson said.

“The primary (factor) is protection of public health and the environment,” Wilson said Monday. “We understand there’s a frustration at this point on the part of the community. We share that disappointment. But we have to go through this process.”

Wilson said the EPA will consider the oil companies’ cleanup plans if they submit detailed information on them to the agency, but that the plan would still have to go through the EPA review process before it could be implemented. The review process would take until around December, 1993, he said.

Wilson said the EPA may hold the oil companies liable for the costs of the cleanup, no matter which plan is implemented, and that the agency plans to sue if necessary to recover those costs.

The wastes dumped at McColl during World War II were from high-octane aviation fuel. Duchie maintains that the oil companies had manufactured the fuel under government orders and disposed of the sludge legally and that therefore they should not be liable for costs to remove the wastes.