Toxic site won’t be used for homes

A residential development planned for the Ascon-Nesi toxic site in Southeast Huntington Beach won’t happen, according to a representative of nine companies responsible for cleaning up the property.

Instead, the land will be developed for recreational use or as open space with some small neighborhood stores, said Mary Adams Urashima, who represents the companies and Ascon owner Cannery Hamilton LLC.

Urashima made the announcement during a town hall meeting Nov. 15 in Huntington Beach, where a crowd of about 60 residents and community leaders assembled to learn about plans for the property — a controversial issue in the city for more than a decade.

Since 1992, various owners of the Ascon-Nesi land at Magnolia Street and Hamilton Avenue had planned to turn the property into a high-density residential development that called for more than 500 homes.

Nine oil companies dumped their toxic waste on the 38 acres for five decades. Seven of them are now funding cleanup efforts. The other two went bankrupt and no longer exist.

The property was contaminated by toxic wastes, such as drilling mud, fuel oil and styrene (a type of plastic) from the 1930s to the early ‘80s from companies including Chevron Texaco Corp., Conoco Philips Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp.

The responsible parties don’t want homes built on the property because they are worried about future liability, said Sen. Tom Harman of Huntington Beach, who moderated the forum.

“Forty years from now, they don’t want the liability issues to come up,” he said.