Gun range cleanup stalled by lawsuit

Jose Paul Corona

Dog owners may have a long wait for a new park at the old gun range,

while the city is tied up in litigation with the Huntington Beach Police

Officers Assn. for failing to clean up lead deposits at the site.

The city filed a lawsuit against the association on Nov. 26, 2001 over

who is responsible for the decontamination of the site.

“It’s kind of a ridiculous suit,” said Russ Reinhart, president of the

Police Officers Assn.

Reinhart contends that when the city terminated the gun range lease in

1997, there was an agreement made with the city that it would share in

the cost of the cleanup.

He said the police officers association held up its end of the bargain

and now its being sued.

“We had a mutual agreement, we fulfilled our obligations” Reinhart

said, referring to a letter drafted by Ron Hagan, director of community

services for the city.

City Atty. Gail Hutton said that no such agreement was made and would

not be binding without being adopted as a resolution by the City Council.

Hutton wouldn’t discuss the lawsuit in detail as litigation is pending.

“Yes, we are bringing a suit against the police officers association,

but they do have insurance to cover this type of loss, it shouldn’t be

that big a deal,” Hutton said of the cleanup.

Talks began to resolve the issue, but the council decided to drop out

saying that it felt that the Police Officers Assn. wasn’t forthright

about how the site was operated, Hagan said.

City officials were told that lead deposits on the site were confined

to one area, but when the site was examined, city officials learned that

lead deposits were found throughout the gun range, Hagan said.

The city is filing suit to try to get the Police Officers Assn.’s

insurance companies to pay for the cleanup costs, which could range

between $500,000 and $1 million, Hagan said.

“The only way we could get at the insurance [money] and get them to

cooperate was to file suit,” Hagan said, “The Police Officers Assn. has

backed us into it.”

While Hutton admits that a trial is likely, it is something that she

would like to avoid.

“We would like nothing more than an opportunity to settle this case as

quickly as possible,” she said.

She added that she hopes a settlement can be reached.

Reinhart said he isn’t worried about the outcome of trial.

“The Huntington Beach Police Officers Assn. is confident the lawsuit

will be thrown out by the court and so is our insurance company,”

Reinhart said.

Regardless of the outcome, Hagan knows that this is an issue that

won’t be resolved quickly.

“I don’t anticipate that the dog park will be moved any timesoon,” he

said

With or without the litigation the clean up of the site was always

going to be time consuming. Finding a quick resolution won’t change that,

said Mayor Debbie Cook.

“Nobody is promising an instant turnover,” Cook said, “I’ve never

found that hurrying through a project has made it better.”

* JOSE PAUL CORONA covers City Hall and education. He can be reached

at (714) 965-7173 or by e-mail at o7 jose.corona@latimes.com.f7