State Probes Radioactive Liquid Found at Dump Site

SACRAMENTO —  State health officials are investigating low levels of radioactivity found in liquid seeping from the controversial Operating Industries dump site in Monterey Park, it was disclosed Monday.

While both state health and federal environmental officials stressed that the small amounts of radioactive cobalt and perhaps other radioactive elements at the landfill posed no danger to the public, nearby residents expressed worry that the radioactivity could be a threat to their health.

The findings are “no reason for concern,” said Alexis Strauss, chief of enforcement for the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in San Francisco.

Cobalt Sample

One sample of liquid taken from the site showed levels of radioactive cobalt 38 times the amount that would be permitted in drinking water, according to figures provided by Strauss.

But she noted, “There is no opportunity to ingest it or for a person there to be irradiated by it.”

The 190-acre Operating Industries property, which is bisected by the Pomona Freeway, is the subject of controversy between the EPA and the Deukmejian Administration. State health officials back a plan by the City of Monterey Park to develop a 45-acre parcel north of the freeway. But EPA officials insist that the parcel requires further study and should be included on the list of federal Superfund cleanup sites, a decision that would greatly delay development.

Gov. George Deukmejian has been criticized by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, for accepting $19,250 in campaign contributions from Operating Industries.

More Tests Set

State health officials plan further tests this week of liquid drawn from beneath a 600-foot high mountain of hazardous material at the site just south of the Pomona Freeway.

“We don’t feel there is any real danger at this point,” said Alan Sorsher, a waste management engineer for the state Department of Health Services. “We are continuing to look at it and make sure.”

However, Phyllis Rabins of Homeowners to Eliminate Landfill Problems, a neighborhood group, is skeptical about the reassurances from government officials. She voiced anger that the findings, based on samples taken from the site in 1984 and 1985, are only now being revealed to residents.

“They downplay it,” Rabins complained. “They say there’s a little bit of vinyl chloride, a little bit of benzene, a little bit of mercury, a little bit of zinc, and now a little bit of radioactivity. That’s a witch’s brew and it’s scary as heck.”

She noted that liquid from the dump sometimes flows from the Operating Industries site into the streets of the residential neighborhood that surrounds it. “People here deliberately avoid certain streets where leachate (liquid from the dump) is oozing out.”

To minimize the flow of contaminated liquid from the site, the EPA has been trucking fluid pumped from the dump to Triple J Pacification Facility Corp. in Vernon for treatment.

The treated waste water can be dumped in ordinary sewers.

To eliminate the cost of trucking the liquid away, Operating Industries proposed building a treatment plant on the dump site itself. The Los Angeles County Sanitation District required as a condition for the treatment facility permit that the liquid from the site be tested for radioactivity.

The results showed total radioactivity levels that were in some cases 30% to 40% above the state limit for discharge into sewers.

State health officials who conducted further tests found that much of the radioactivity could be explained by a naturally occurring radioactive form of potassium, an element that is commonly found in somewhat lower quantities in ordinary sea water, according to Sorsher.

But EPA officials, who are preparing to add the Operating Industries dump to the Superfund list, ordered additional tests that revealed the radioactive cobalt, an element that is commonly used in hospitals and in industry.

“It is possible that over the years there may have been illegal disposal, maybe by hospitals and clinics,” Sorsher speculated.

“We are reviewing records (of what was disposed of at the site) from 1978 to its closure in 1984,” said EPA’s Strauss. But the material may have been left during 30 years of operating before record-keeping requirements went into effect, she said.