Countywide : Agreement Reached on McColl Cleanup

Government officials and oil company executives have finally reached accord on how to clean up 100,000 cubic yards of petroleum waste at the McColl hazardous dump site in Fullerton.

In a move that pleased all sides in a long-running controversy, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced a preliminary decision to clean up hazardous sumps at the site by simply capping them with a plastic material.

Officials estimate the work will be completed within three years at a cost of $30 million. The government has ordered a group of petroleum producers to pay for the project.

The EPA earlier had favored a cleanup method by which each of the 12 sumps dotting the 22-acre site would be injected with a cement-like substance to neutralize and solidify it--a job that would have cost up to $97 million and taken as long as six years to complete.

In addition to being cheaper and quicker, EPA officials said, the caps would require little, if any, temporary relocation of area residents.

“We should all be working off the same sheet of music now and putting our energies into getting this completed as soon as possible,” said Jeff Zelikson, director of the western region of the agency’s hazardous waste division. “There is nothing standing in the way of a solution here; it’s been a long time coming.”

The government’s announcement drew praise from people on all sides of the issue, which has been a source of controversy since 1979, when the government declared it a major toxic area.

A golf course was built in 1960 on the site, a former World War II-era petroleum dumping ground, and several hundred homes were added in 1976. Two years later homeowners complained of odors and ooze, and by September, 1983, the government had added McColl--now surrounded by a fence to keep people out--to the Superfund list of high-priority toxic cleanup sites.