Residents by Trash Mountain Still Worry Though Smell Fades, Cleanup Is Planned

MONTEBELLO — Hank Yoshitake can once again see the top of Mt. Wilson from an upstairs window of his home--a view that was obscured for years by a mountain of trash that has begun to settle.

“It’s still got a long way to go,” Yoshitake said. “From my upstairs window, I could see the whole (San Gabriel) range” in the late 1970s.

And now Ed Grey’s mind is at ease when he invites friends and relatives to his Montebello home. The pungent odors that once fanned out from the nearby Operating Industries Inc. landfill have mostly faded.

“When you decided to have people over, you’d pray, ‘I hope it doesn’t stink tonight,’ ” Grey said. “They’d say, ‘Ooh, what’s that smell?’, and you’d try to change the subject.”

Uncomfortable Years

Yoshitake, Grey and thousands of other Montebello residents lived through the uncomfortable years when an old gravel pit grew into a mountain of garbage more than 200 feet above ground on Monterey Park’s southern border with Montebello. Yoshitake, president of Homeowners to Eliminate Landfill Problems (HELP), lives on Yorktown Avenue within a block of the dump; Grey lives about four blocks away from the landfill on Appian Way.

As the trash mound grew skyward in the 1970s and early 1980s, the biting smell increased, and so did headaches, irritated eyes and sore throats, residents said.

Although the dump was closed in 1984, residents have lived with its lingering problems since. They say, though, that things are getting better in their neighborhoods.

The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has targeted the landfill for priority cleanup with federal Superfund money. The agency is still studying how it will sanitize the toxic waste site, but interim measures to control the spread of leached chemicals and migrating gases have made life around the dump easier.

Five-Year Plan Announced

Although the final cleanup is not due to begin until sometime after 1991, the EPA announced a five-year plan in July to spend $5.1 million a year to monitor and control contaminants in the meantime.

The plan includes improvements to be made this fall in systems to collect leachate, control gas and drain the site. A 24-hour air sampling program is scheduled to begin in October, and an in-home air sampling program will start in early 1988.

Methane and other gases are generated as the trash in the landfill decomposes, and leachate, an oily and highly toxic liquid, oozes through the dump as rain water mixes with disposed chemicals and rotting trash.

Still to be decided is whether a leachate treatment plant will be built on the site. Currently, leachate is stored in tanks and trucked to a treatment plant in Vernon.

Residents say there are signs of improvement on several fronts.

Detectors Removed

Sometimes, the improvement lies in what they don’t see. For instance, gas monitoring stations--which once detected cancer-causing vinyl chloride at levels exceeding state standards--are gone. The South Coast Air Quality Management District removed the detectors a year ago after levels dropped well below state standards, said spokesman Ron Ketcham.

Another improvement is aesthetic: The trash mountain has been shrinking about 10 feet a year as garbage decomposes and settles.

Earlier this year, the EPA spent about $1 million to build a buttress where the landfill looms over the backyards of homes along Ashiya Avenue in Montebello. The slopes of the landfill were graded, and plants were sown to stabilize them and improve their appearance.

The EPA works constantly to keep at least some earth over the rubbish, which always seems to find its way to the surface.

“After the rainy season, there is erosion, and we need to make repairs pretty frequently,” said EPA geologist Michele S. Dermer.

‘Air Dike’ for Gases

The EPA continues to run a gas flaring and leachate collection system and an “air dike,” which uses compressed air to keep gases from escaping into the neighborhoods surrounding the landfill.

Dermer said the EPA staff is recommending building the leachate plant on one of three sites in the dump area. A final decision will not be made later this month.

From 4,000 to 6,000 gallons of leachate are collected at the landfill each day, and that volume is expected to rise when the collection system is improved, said Kevin Dick, remedial project manager.

The leachate plant could be used beyond the five-year interim plan if the EPA decides that it is needed during the final cleanup, Dick said.

Yoshitake said his group would like the EPA to delay building the treatment plant until further studies determine the volume of leachate at the site.

Change Feared

Although the EPA has guaranteed that the plant will treat only leachate from the OII landfill, residents fear that this could change if other dumps want to send leachate to the plant in an emergency, Yoshitake said.

One change that has occurred in recent months is an improved relationship between Monterey Park and Montebello.

For years, the cities fought bitterly. Montebello blamed Monterey Park for allowing the trash to be piled so high. Monterey Park countered that Montebello never should have allowed homes to be built so close to the landfill.

Hostilities reached a peak in 1975 after the Monterey Park City Council voted to allow Operating Industries to increase the height of the trash mountain by 100 feet. Montebello sued the city and Operating Industries. The case was settled when Monterey Park and the landfill firm agreed to lower the height limit by more than 10 feet.

In July, however, the two city councils passed a joint resolution to “agree to set aside any past unilateral interests” and to “work cooperatively with EPA.” The councils held a joint get-acquainted meeting Sept. 9.

Plant Studies Urged

Like Yoshitake’s group, both city councils oppose construction of the leachate plant until further studies are done.

“We want to make sure we’re marching together to make sure the landfill is cleaned up and the problems are cleared up,” said Monterey Park City Manager Lloyd de Llamas.

But it is a fragile truce. If the EPA builds the leachate plant as expected, Montebello would want it north of the Pomona Freeway--which cuts through the landfill and separates residential areas of the two cities--and Monterey Park would want it south of the freeway.

Two of the three sites under consideration are in the 45 acres of landfill north of the freeway in Monterey Park. The third is in the 145 acres to the south in Montebello.

Monterey Park would like to see an office-retail center developed on one of its two sites. Montebello envisions an auto mart on its site.

“That’s an area of contention,” said Montebello City Administrator Joseph M. Goeden. “They obviously would prefer not to have it on their side of the freeway, and we would prefer not to have it on our side of the freeway.”

Troubling Results

Meanwhile, studies around the landfill have unearthed troubling, if not unexpected, results: Rainwater runoff from the site contains small amounts of heavy metals and other contaminants, and several geological faults run through and around the site.

The faults are worrisome because they could serve as passageways through which toxic liquids from the dump could pollute aquifers in the area. Samples of ground water taken near the site have been found to contain contaminants “similar to what’s in the leachate,” Dermer said. But she added that there is no “direct evidence” that the contaminants are from the landfill.

The EPA, which had six test wells in the area, recently drilled 15 more. Dermer said ground-water samples will be taken from the new wells soon.

So far, the EPA has spent $6 million studying how to clean up the site, and it anticipates spending another $12 million on studies before a final clean-up plan is chosen, Dermer said. Emergency actions to control contamination from the dump have cost about $4 million.

EPA officials decline to estimate how much the actual cleanup will cost or how long it will take.

82 Firms Notified

The federal agency has notified 82 firms that they may be liable for cleanup costs. Operating Industries manifests indicate that these firms--including Chevron U. S. A., Arco, Exxon U. S. A. and McDonnell Douglas--account for about 70% of the landfill’s volume, said EPA attorney Lisa Haage. She said negotiations with many of the firms are continuing.

The EPA has also notified Operating Industries itself that it is liable for cleanup costs, Haage said, and the agency will take legal action if it fails to reach an agreement with the landfill firm.

Residents continue to worry about the long-term health effects of having lived near the landfill.

In 1984, the state and Los Angeles County surveyed more than 1,800 residents. A report on the survey last year said they had suffered more headaches, sore throats and nausea than usual, but no serious health problems.

Cancer Cases

But the study found 27 cases of cancer in the neighborhood northwest of the dump. Only 11.7 cases had been expected, based on findings in a similar neighborhood in Hacienda Heights, 10 miles east of the dump.

The Los Angeles County-USC Tumor Registry is studying whether the cancer cases are linked to the dump. State and county health officials initially said a report would be due last March, but a heavy workload has delayed its completion, officials said.

Many residents fear that over the years they breathed carcinogenic vinyl chloride, which was detected near the landfill.

“There’s not much talk about it, but I still think about it,” said Art Rangel, a Montebello resident who lived next to the dump from 1976 to 1984. “You wonder: Five years from now, is it going to come up?”