The SOCCCD and EPA’s “List 11”

TODAY, while researching our benighted district, I stumbled across something odd. I came upon a website provided by The Center for Public Integrity, a respected watch dog organization with which I am familiar. (See Charles Lewis.)

It turns out that the website is part of the CPI’s March 2007 two-part report on the sorry state of the Superfund program (Wasting Away: Superfund’s Toxic Legacy). That report is mighty grim.

Here’s what the website claims to provide:

As a public service, the Center for Public Integrity created a search of the Environmental Protection Agency’s database that connects companies, organizations and government agencies to Superfund sites. The results below come from the database, also known as list 11, which tracks the EPA’s interactions with these “potentially responsible parties.”

For those who need reminding about the notion of a “Superfund” site, the CPI explains:

A Superfund site is a toxic waste site that falls under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program. After public awareness grew about heavily polluted areas like Love Canal, Congress passed the … Superfund law… in 1980. Under the law, companies and other parties found responsible for polluting sites are required to clean up the area or pay the costs for cleanup to the EPA.

But what is a “potentially responsible party”? According to the CPI,

A “potentially responsible party” or PRP, is a company, organization or individual that the EPA determines possibly played a role in the contamination of a Superfund site. … The EPA keeps a database of all PRPs called List 11….

List 11 is very long. I searched for “South Orange County Community College District” on CPI’s version of List 11 and, sure enough, our district appears on it, alongside “Casmalia Resources,” a Superfund site in Santa Barbara County.

According to an EPA website regarding Casmalia,

The Casmalia Resources Superfund Site is a 252-acre inactive commercial hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facility located … 10 miles southwest of the City of Santa Maria, 1.2 miles from north of the Town of Casmalia, and four miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Between 1973 and 1989, the site accepted approximately 5.6 billion pounds of waste at its 92 waste management facilities which included landfills, ponds, shallow wells, disposal trenches, and treatment units. More than 10,000 companies and government entities sent waste to Casmalia during this period.

…[T]he site’s owners and operators (Casmalia Resources, Hunter Resources, and Kenneth H. Hunter, Jr.) accepted ... industrial and commercial waste material, which included sludges, pesticides, solvents, acids, metals, caustics, cyanide, and nonliquid polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Facing multiple regulatory enforcement actions, the site’s owners and operators stopped taking shipments of waste material in 1989. In 1991, the owners and operators abandoned efforts to properly close and clean up the site. At that time, conditions at the site presented imminent and substantial endangerment to human health and the environment.

From 1992 to 1996, EPA used Superfund authorities to take emergency actions to stabilize the site. These actions included installing and operating systems for collecting, treating, and disposing of contaminated subsurface liquids, controlling the flow of storm water, and stabilizing the landfills. (See EPA.)

In its discussion of the Casmalia Superfund site, the EPA, too, refers to “potentially responsible parties” (PRPs). It then explains that

One of EPA’s major responsibilities is to create an equitable process to ensure that each of these parties [i.e., customers whose waste went to the site] pays its share of total site costs—both for the expenses that EPA has incurred already, and for future improvements and maintenance at the site. The current estimate of these expenses is $271.9 million….

EPA will finance site work through settlements with the entities that sent waste to be disposed of at Casmalia, as well as with the site’s owners and operators….

The EPA then goes on to describe a series of settlements with PRPs, one in 1996, another in 2000, and yet another in 2003. The favorability of terms of settlement appear to decline with the passage of time.

“EPA,” the site goes on to say, “will continue to offer ‘cash-out’ settlements to former Casmalia customers.”

It appears that this information was written in 2004. What has occurred since 2004 is not explained.

If CPI’s version of List 11 is accurate (a safe bet), SOCCCD is, according to the EPA, a potentially responsible party. But I have no idea if the current list includes the many parties (e.g., “de minimis” parties, i.e., parties with minimal responsibility) that have already settled.

Thus, for all that I know, SOCCCD has already settled (in which case, of course, there would be a public record of that).

Further, it is possible that the SOCCCD has successfully contested its status, assigned by the EPA, as a “PRP.” It would appear, however, that any customer whose waste went to Casmalia is ipso facto a PRP.

Can anybody shed light on any of this? —CW

P.S.:

Just now, I looked up "SOCCCD" and “Casmalia” with the Yahoo search engine, and, essentially, I got three items, only one of which was relevant.

It was Dissent!

In an article published in 1998 entitled Williams to Lang: “Stop living in an ivory castle!”, I described the September 14, 1998, meeting of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees. At one point, I reported that

After a break, we heard about a lawsuit against the district filed by Casmalia Resources Site. Evidently, the firm took our hazardous waste and buried it at its site. Then the EPA showed up and told Casmalia that they’ll have to spend a million bucks cleaning up. Naturally, Casmalia is now trying to get the money from its clients, including us. Frogue said something, but it was stupefying, and so I have no clear memory of it.

A million bucks? Try $270 million!

So did we pay our share or what?