EPA Will Start Capping McColl Superfund Site

Imagine a gargantuan layer cake, covering eight acres and more than 3 feet thick, containing high-density polyethylene, topped with grass and built at a cost of millions.

That’s the plan for the giant impermeable cap to be built atop the World War II-era petroleum waste dump known as the McColl Superfund site.

After years of debate and delay, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that construction of the cap will begin within weeks. The project is intended to contain about 100,000 cubic yards of hazardous waste, keeping gasses in and water out.

A groundbreaking ceremony is set for Wednesday, and details of the cleanup plan will be discussed that day at a public meeting in Buena Park.

“Overall, for McColl, this is quite an historic moment. It’s the beginning of construction of a final remedy,” said Michael Montgomery, an EPA official who has worked extensively on the McColl project.

Neighbors hope the plan will end decades of uncertainty about the McColl site, a dump where oily sludge was dumped into 12 sumps during the 1940s. Homeowners have complained of odors and health problems since a neighborhood was built nearby in the 1970s.

Now, neighbors say that relief may be at hand.

“They’re already out there putting in roads and cutting down trees that are in the way,” reported David Bushey, president of the Fullerton Hills Community Assn. and a close neighbor of the 22-acre McColl site.

The solution will not be cheap, with total costs reaching $80 million or more, according to the McColl Site Group, made up of oil companies held responsible for cleanup.

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The cap project alone is estimated at nearly $40 million. Oil companies already have spent $25 million in testing, cap design and construction, and another $14 million is slated to complete the work, said Al Hendricker, project coordinator for the McColl Site Group, which includes Shell Oil Co., Atlantic-Richfield, Texaco and Union Oil of California. The other $40 million includes site maintenance, studies and legal costs, he said.

An earlier, EPA-backed cleanup plan called for neutralizing the waste by injecting a cement-like material into the ground, a technique that could have taken four to six years and cost nearly $100 million.

That approach was opposed by the oil companies, and neighbors worried about the noise and long-running construction. So EPA switched gears last September, announcing it would approve a capping plan instead.

Four or five families along Tiffany Place may be relocated voluntarily for four to six weeks because of construction work in backyard areas, officials said.

Containment of the sumps will be done in two main phases, officials said.

First, subsurface barrier walls will be built around the sumps by filling deep trenches with a mixture of clay, soil and water.

Then a containment will be built above the waste, made up of two caps, 3 1/2 to 5 feet thick and covering a total of eight acres. All of that will be covered with topsoil and grass, and plans are under way to use part of the land as a golf course.

A landscape architect and a golf-course architect are now at work on the plans, EPA said.

After years of looking out at an arid Superfund site, neighbors are looking forward to seeing greenery again.

“It’s going to be absolutely gorgeous,” Bushey said.

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Capping McColl

Construction is due to begin in September on a $40 million cap over the McColl Superfund site in Fullerton. Spread over eight acres, it will cover nearly 100,000 cubic yards of sludge and soils.

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Cap Design:

Plant cover-protection layer

Sand / cobbles- Drainage layer

Plastic barrier layer

Sand

Gas collection layer

Sand

Reinforced foundation layer

Sand

Unreinforced foundation layer

Ground