Cities, Firms to Pay $63 Million to Clean Up Landfill

In a landmark agreement that advances efforts to clean up one of the nation’s worst hazardous waste dumps, 14 Los Angeles County cities and a host of waste haulers and other public agencies agreed Thursday to pay more than $63 million to clean up the landfill in Monterey Park.

The agreement, announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice, brings to more than $268 million the amount of money dedicated to the cleanup of the Operating Industries toxic waste site after nearly a decade of litigation over who is responsible for the 190-acre landfill.

Under the settlement filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles, the cities, Los Angeles County and Caltrans, which used the landfill to dump tons of municipal trash, would be freed from any future liability.

“What makes this a big deal is that it resolves the liability of the municipal contributors, and leaves us to focus on what the remaining remedy is for the site,” said Katherine Shine, assistant regional counsel for the EPA, which is directing the cleanup of the closed landfill.

The dump was added to the national Superfund priority list of toxic sites in 1986. “This site is basically a 300-foot-tall, 190-acre mountain of every kind of disposable item in the world,” Shine said.

The proposed consent decree resolves a 1989 lawsuit filed by more than 100 companies and public entities, including Mobil, Exxon and General Motors. Those corporations have given the EPA $205 million to clean up the dump and sued the cities, county, state Department of Transportation and 18 waste-hauling firms to force them to share the costs.

In March, the 14 cities and the county tentatively agreed to pay $32 million to those companies, but the final settlement goes further. Instead of reimbursing the companies that sued them, the municipalities now must give the money to the EPA directly for cleanup of the site, Shine said.

Caltrans also joined the settlement since March by agreeing to pay $14.8 million.

“It’s important that the money from this lawsuit is cleaning up the site, instead of going to Fortune 500 companies,” Shine said. “This is really good news. It is really a good thing for the companies, the cities and the government.”

Officials in the primarily small San Gabriel Valley cities were unavailable for comment. But when the tentative agreement was reached earlier this year, attorney Timothy Gallagher, who represented the cities, said they were “ecstatic” because the potential liability could have been much higher. The corporations originally sought $312 million in their lawsuit.

The cities and county had no choice but to settle the case after a federal judge ruled last year that they could be found liable under environmental law.

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The EPA is debating various cleanup options for the site and investigating the scope of ground water pollution under the mound of toxic trash. The cost of the project depends largely on the extent of subterranean contamination. Large-scale cleanups often exceed $300 million, and EPA officials have said the work at Operating Industries could cost $650 million.

About 170 companies dumped industrial waste at the Monterey Park landfill, which operated from 1948 through 1984. About 22 to 31 million tons of solid waste as well as more than 300 million gallons of liquid waste were dumped there.

The cities that signed the settlement were Alhambra, Monterey Park, Montebello, South Gate, Compton, Lynwood, San Gabriel, Rosemead, Temple City, Bell, Maywood, City of Commerce, South Pasadena and Cudahy. Each city council endorsed the settlement.

Other than the $14.8 million from Caltrans, the city of Alhambra is paying the largest amount, $8.5 million, followed by Montebello at $4.8 million and Monterey Park at $4.6 million. Los Angeles County and two sanitation districts agreed to pay about $62,000, while several private waste haulers will pay a total of $10 million. Six sanitation districts also agreed on payments.

Although three other lawsuits over the Operating Industries site have been resolved, Shine said that some cases are pending against other parties that used the landfill.

The resolution of the dispute among the hundreds of corporations and public entities that used the landfill was negotiated by the EPA and the Justice Department, which became involved at the request of the private companies.

“By entering into this settlement, U.S. EPA turned a contentious lawsuit between the industrial waste generators and the cities into a win-win situation,” said John Wise, deputy regional administrator for EPA’s western region.

A site is placed on the Superfund list when the EPA determines that it poses a substantial long-term threat to public health or the environment, usually through contamination of ground water, soil or air. Many sites linger on the list for more than a decade while the EPA struggles with litigation and technical problems over cleanup.