Elmira, near Vacaville, has been cause for concern
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SOURCE: California Department of Toxic Substances Control
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ELMIRA, Calif. (KCRA) —
California is on the forefront of environmental regulations, with the strictest laws in the country -- yet, the state also has a toxic history that taxpayers are funding to clean up.
Photos: Toxic 'orphan' sites become state's problem
A small warehouse sits about five miles east of Vacaville in the small town of Elmira. The building is a block from the town’s school.
Watch report -- KCRA investigates: Toxic history causes problems
The property appears empty and abandoned, but its history as a wood treatment plant has haunted the community -- and already cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
"The stuff was allowed to spill anywhere and everywhere," longtime resident Rush Dally said.
He’s referring to what the state says is a mixture of toxic chemicals left behind by four different companies that operated the pressure-treated lumber facility.
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Dally’s family has lived near the site for four generations.
"The place was not run with the contemporary concepts and ideas of how we should take care of hazardous materials," Dally said.
He and other longtime residents said that 30 years ago, when the town would get heavy rains, the people would see a green fluid flowing from the plant and into the drainage ditches near the road.
"It was a bright luminous green," Dally said. "With kind of a yellow sheen to it."
Those chemicals were used in Elmira for decades, said Charlie Ridenour, with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.
"Chrome and arsenic were the two really bad ones in the ground water," Ridenour said.
The two elements contaminated the soil so badly that the last company to operate the plant, CAPCO, tried to seal up the building, Ridenour said.
"They sprayed concrete all over the entire inside of the building so you wouldn't have access to it," he said, describing a spray-on concrete.
The company had sealed the entire inside of the building, minus the major equipment, in hopes of stopping the contamination. But it didn’t work.
Rain water seeped through the concrete into the contaminated floor underneath.
In fact, Ridenour said, the site actually had three layers of flooring: The original layer from when the factory was built -- which was contaminated and then coated with another layer of concrete -- and then another two that were then covered with the spray-on layer.
The rains would seep through all three layers of concrete, leaching arsenic and chrome into the soil and groundwater.
The water had 1,000 times more contamination than is allowed.
"The cleanup goal is around 10 -- 10 parts per million," Ridneour said. "It was in the 10,000 parts per million."
Eventually, CAPCO declared bankruptcy. When it folded, so did the efforts to clean up the contamination, so the state stepped in.
The state had to rip out all three layers of concrete.
"Usually, when you do a cleanup, it can be recycled," said Ridenour. "This was so bad, all the concrete had to go to a hazardous waste landfill."
The arsenic and chromium levels were so high, they had soaked into the concrete, turning it green.
It was so bad, it all had to go to a hazardous materials facility at a cost of more than $800,000.
The Elmira wood treatment facility is what the state calls an "orphan site," or, a toxic property where there’s no owner or the owner isn’t cleaning up the waste.
The state has about 50 of those sites, including the Elmira property.
That’s on top of eight "superfund" sites -- so-called because they are so polluted that the federal government steps in to help with cleanup.
Once the cleanup is finished, the state is responsible to maintain, monitor and pay for the remaining operations at the sites.
Included in the orphan sites are a handful of old mines in Nevada County; a chrome plating shop in the heart of Sacramento; a vacant lot that once housed a fertilizer warehouse now polluted by lead and arsenic also in Sacramento; and one of those other superfund sites is a former creosote plant in Stockton.
All of them are the state’s problem, but the Department of Toxic Substances Control has a budget of just more than $9 million a year.
“If we put in a remedy that triggers a lot of long-term operation and maintenance, that operation and maintenance has to continue," Ridenour said. "And (it) cuts into what we can put into other projects. It's really frustrating."
The Elmira wood treatment facility was sold to a new owner, Jim Dobbas, in the late 1990s, according to the state.
But DTSC said he hasn’t been performing the maintenance and operations, which he agreed to do.
As a result, DTSC and the attorney general have filed a lawsuit against Dobbas and all the previous owners in the hopes of recovering the cleanup costs.
"We've spent just over $2.2 million since 2006 on the project," Ridenour said. "The costs will continue. There's still some groundwater contamination."
KCRA 3 wanted to ask Dobbas what happened, and if the water is not being monitored as the state requires.
His listed address is behind three padlocks and a gate in Elmira.
Dobbas did not return any phone calls from KCRA 3.
The groundwater in Elmira is better, but it’s still 10 times more polluted than is allowed, which frustrates residents like Dally.
"You got a polluted spot," Dally said. "You got a department that's supposed to ... I don't know, sometimes the connections are not made."
When KCRA 3 asked Dally if he ever thought the water would be completely clean, he simply said no.
Until the lawsuit is settled and there is more money to clean it up, sites like the former wood treatment plant will remain toxic.
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