EPA Downgrades Oil Firms’ McColl Dump Plan

A proposal by five oil companies to encapsulate refinery sludge at the McColl hazardous waste dump in Fullerton is low on a list of options being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency official said Wednesday.

The EPA has not ruled out the proposal, according to Jeffrey Zelikson, acting director of the agency’s toxics and waste management division, but it was added to a list of potential solutions at the request of the oil companies, which have been held responsible for dumping the 1940s-era aviation fuel wastes and oil drilling muds.

The plan has drawn sharp criticism from city officials and residents who have accused the companies--Shell Oil, Arco, Texaco, Unocal and Phillips Petroleum--of trying to “skew” a decision on a permanent solution to the dump.

The companies’ $12.5-million proposal includes excavation and disposal of surface waste; a seven-foot-deep soil-and-fabric cap to control noxious odors and prevent contact with the sludge; underground walls of rock and concrete to prevent movement of the waste; retaining walls to shore up slopes, and a gas collection and monitoring system.

A spokesman for the companies said the plan is intended mainly to stabilize the site and prevent exposure of buried wastes in the event of a major earthquake.

Proposal Questioned

But city officials said the companies’ proposal would prove impractical to remove once in place. They also accused the oil firms of using the stability issue as a ruse.

“Quite frankly, we doubt the veracity of the statements and purported need for this ‘interim’ measure on the basis of the potential for a severe seismic incident which would endanger the surrounding community,” City Manager William C. Winter wrote recently to state and federal officials in a rebuttal of the proposal.

“They are magnifying the stability problem to skew options being considered, and to make this solution the permanent one,” said Barry Eaton, the city’s chief planner. “As a practical matter, it would make it much easier to just leave it there.”

Zelikson said the EPA does not consider stability of the site a major concern: “If there were an emergent concern, we would have taken care of it.”

In earlier tests, health officials said they had determined that soil at the dump, near the Los Coyotes Country Club, contains sulfuric acid, benzene and arsenic.

But the officials have said the dump stil poses no immediate health threat.

In 1985, a $26.5-million federal Superfund project to excavate and haul the waste to a Kern County disposal facility was blocked when residents near the disposal site successfully sued to have an environmental impact study carried out.

State health officials and the EPA have since been studying alternative cleanup methods, including treatment and reburial of the waste, incineration, and encapsulation at the site, a proposal similar to the companies’ proposal. The state has estimated cleanup costs at $50 million to $100 million.