It’s 3:30 p.m., and in one hour the Hitching Post begins serving its “world famous” barbecue. That familiar, drifting smell of burning red oak sweetens the breeze.
Thirty-one years ago, a vastly different smell penetrated the air.
“The way I remember it smelling was this weird blueberry smell,” said Louis Meza, a chef at the Hitching Post. In the mid-1980s, Meza was a student at Casmalia Elementary School. “The smell just stuck to your nose.”
The wind swept the acrid stench from a toxic waste landfill down the hillside and into the town of Casmalia, where it made some of the 175 or so residents—including Meza—sick to their stomachs.
Deep in the canyon at the end of Bognuda Road, a cauldron of chemical stew sat less than 2 miles away from the town. For 16 years, Casmalia Resources Hazardous Waste Management Facility accepted more than 5.5 billion pounds of industrial and agricultural waste from more than 10,000 generators. The dumpsite accepted anything from oil field waste to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a suspected carcinogen that Congress banned in 1979.
The EPA eventually took over the site. Since then, the agency has steadily attempted to repair the 252-acre patch of land that is now known as the Casmalia Resources Superfund Site. The latest in a series of settlements was announced in the Federal Register on March 24. More than 330 of the companies that contributed the smallest amounts of waste to the site agreed to pay the EPA a grand total of $1.4 million toward the cost of cleanup.
For those who lived the ordeal, the EPA-estimated $285 million needed to clean up the site doesn’t come close to correcting the problem. More than 25 years after successfully getting the site shut down, some say the environmental damage was done and will never be repaired.
The Superfund of Superfunds
In 2001, the Casmalia Resources landfill was declared a Superfund site, or a toxic waste dump the EPA considers most in need of cleanup. Using the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) passed by Congress in 1980, the EPA can compel companies that sent waste to the site to help finance the cleanup effort. The law was a watershed moment that started the process of cleaning and containing hundreds of toxic waste sites across the country.
Casmalia Resources was still accepting dangerous material for almost a decade after the law took effect. The company started in 1973 as a small dump for oil companies and farming operations. But soon, the site expanded to accept more types of chemical waste.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported in 1985 that the site’s owner, Kenneth Hunter Jr., agreed to accept 1,300 barrels of PCB-ladden oil sludge (the level of contamination varied) from the Nelco Oil plant.
But even before that, Casmalia was at the receiving end of other highly contaminated landfills. The Stringfellow Acid Pits in Riverside County became one of the first designated Superfund sites in the country in 1982.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that for several years following the designation, 350,000 gallons of contaminated fluids were pumped out of Stringfellow each month and processed at a separate facility. The residual sludge containing cadmium, mercury, lead, copper, arsenic, and other toxic substances was shipped to Casmalia.
“A list of the toxic substances dumped at Stringfellow looks like a chemical alphabet soup. Among probable human carcinogens or mutagens were trichloroethylene (TCE), methylene chloride, chloroform, tetrachloroethylene, cadmium and nickel compounds,” the Chronicle reported.
Casmalia became the dump site for almost any hazardous waste imaginable from both public and private entities, including pesticide solvents, heavy metals, acids, and municipal sewage sludge.
Although these are only considered to be small contributors, in March the Federal Register listed a who’s who of some of the corporations and California governments that sent hazardous waste to Casmalia, including Hershey Foods Corporation, IBM, FedEx, the Orcutt Unified School District, and the cities of Beverly Hills, El Segundo, Gardena, Redding, and Redondo Beach.
The years of 1983, 1984, and 1985 were the height of Casmalia’s waste disposal activity. Meza said he remembers convoys of trucks, anywhere between eight to 10 at a time, coming down Black Road day and night to unload their contents at the site.
Meza would occasionally play near the landfill site. He once caught a glimpse of the actual landfill while exploring with friends. In short, he described the site as having multiple ponds, and several barrels stuck out from the ground with trucks pouring dirt on top of them.
During the early ’80s, a spray system was set up by the site owners to facilitate the evaporation of the contaminated ponds. Residents said strong winds carried the toxic vapor down the hillside and into the town.
That’s when some Casmalia residents say health problems began, and they decided to fight back.
Shut it down
Ken McCalip was the principal of the now-closed Casmalia Elementary School when things at the site led the small town’s populace to revolt. For years starting in 1984, he suffered from daily headaches and breathing problems. He said he made officials aware of his health problems, but nothing was done.
“We went for years having breathing problems,” McCalip said. “We dutifully logged in our complaints.”
Protests and massive letter-writing campaigns to state officials ensued. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times reported that Casmalia residents dumped bails of hay on the road to block the trucks carrying toxic waste. Eleven people were arrested, including members of Greenpeace, according to the Times.
“We’re tired of being dumped on,” Casmalia resident Nick Irmiter told Torrance’s Daily Breeze in 1985.
Fears in town grew that the imported waste was causing health problems. From 1980 to 1985, McCalip recorded up to a dozen deaths—mostly elderly residents—that occurred during the period Casmalia Resources was active, including a handful of cancer deaths and three stillbirths, although he said it’s uncertain whether the landfill was to blame, and there’s no official record that the toxic waste contributed to any disease or deaths.
At the time, Dr. Kenneth Kizer of the California Department of Health Services was skeptical of the residents’ claims.
“I think what’s going on, and I don’t want to sound harsh, is a lot of toxic superstition,” Kizer told the Los Angeles Times in 1988.
Numerous studies were conducted to test whether the site was causing the reported problems, and none were conclusive. However, in 1986, a Santa Barbara County grand jury report found that the groundwater and air quality surrounding the dumpsite were contaminated.
“Close the site until all health problems are solved and numerous referenced technical deficiencies at the site are corrected,” the report stated.
The report provided residents the fodder they needed to launch a massive legal campaign against Casmalia Resources owner Hunter, who ended up abandoning the site in 1989. The EPA issued a $6.2 million fine against Hunter; it was one of the largest imposed at the time.
After the site was closed, McCalip said his health problems ceased. Although he can’t directly pin it on the company, he believes Casmalia Resources was the cause. He accuses the city and county governments for being complicit with Hunter.
“The minute it was capped and taken over by the EPA, all of the respiratory symptoms ceased, which was a great relief for the community,” McCalip said. “The state and county were so involved with the industries that they did nothing. For a number of years, they wouldn’t even admit the severe odors were coming from the site.”
McCalip views the closure of the site as a personal success for the community. He’s now writing a book on the subject. With a working title of Toxic Tenacity, McCalip’s piecing together documents and recordings of the events surrounding the closing of Casmalia Resources and plans on publishing the book later this year.
After the landfill was eventually capped, the turmoil it caused faded away. Site owner Hunter died in 2000, and the EPA took over, designating Casmalia Resources a Superfund site in 2001 and placing it on the National Priorities List.
Containment or cleanup?
Just before the site became Superfund designated, the EPA entered into an agreement with the site’s 54 top waste contributors—called the Casmalia Resources Site Steering Committee—to determine the cleanup process and how much it would cost.
“This is a huge site … and a lot of contaminants,” said EPA spokesman Rusty Harris-Bishop. “Part of what Superfund is about is addressing the worst of the worst.”
The facility was one of nine sites in the nation that accepted PCBs, according to Dan Niles, an engineer for the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.
With the help of the steering committee, the EPA capped four of the six solid waste landfills—Niles said the two leftover sites include the PCB landfill and a landfill piled with various other chemicals he couldn’t identify. A remedial investigation published by the EPA in 2011 found that the site is under containment.
Harris-Bishop said no one is currently being exposed to toxic material from the site, although he added that without continuing containment measures, more problems could arise.
“If something is not done, it’s a potential problem for the future,” he said.
Monitoring for potential contamination is a constant. It’s so vast that more than 300 wells were installed around the site to test for groundwater contamination, according to Niles. Comparatively speaking, a gas station usually has three to five testing wells, he added.
The four landfills are capped with vegetative covers, which act as protective barriers from the rain. A series of trenches were dug around and through the landfill to contain contaminated runoff from the rain. Three unconnected trenches surround the perimeter, which are essentially the last line of defense for catching pollutants, according to Niles.
A complex of pumps captures the polluted water, cleans it, and recycles the fresh water back onto the site. Waste material and the water that’s too polluted to clean is periodically collected and sent out of the county to be cleaned at another facility, Niles said. It’s been happening for years.
The run-off control systems keep waste isolated from rainwater to large extent, Niles said, adding that the current capture and containment method is not a final remedy for the site.
The EPA is still exploring options, but Niles said he couldn’t get into the details. And even though the toxic waste is technically contained, Harris-Bishop from the EPA insinuated that the land could be unusable for years.
“It will depend on what the remedy selected is, but I would doubt that you would want to use it as anything more than a recreational area,” Harris-Bishop said, adding that they would want to prevent construction on the landfill caps. “It may just be open space.”
The 800 pound gorilla
Toru Miyoshi, an Orcutt resident, was on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors while Casmalia Resources was active. When running for supervisor in ’82, he campaigned with Casmalia as his top priority and pushed for the site’s closure after he was elected.
Looking back, he said hindsight is 20/20. He doesn’t think the landfill’s users should be completely to blame.
“In some ways, I don’t feel that the people who used the facility should be totally responsible for contaminations because it was approved at the time,” Miyoshi said.
While on the board, he was able to get supervisors to approve a 7 percent tax on the site’s owners. That money was used to pay for the lengthy legal battles the county fought to shut Casmalia Resources down. He said it was one of his most rewarding accomplishments.
Years after Casmalia Resources was closed and contained, the landscape deep within the grassy hills overlooking town remains a scar on the morale of those who remember it all.
For Terri Stricklin, general manager of the Hitching Post, the events that took place in Casmalia during the 1980s still fester. Managing the family-owned business at the time, she watched the town suffer.
“It was brutal for us, but we managed to survive,” Stricklin said. “It impacted property values, health, and jobs. Lots of people just don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Once the site closed, it was a relief for everyone. Ask Stricklin about the site’s eventual cleanup, and she will warn you that it’s a dirty word around Casmalia—it should never be mentioned. She believes the site will never be cleaned but stay merely contained.
So far, the EPA has collected $116 million through settlements to put toward cleanup efforts, according to officials.
For Stricklin, no amount of money will make up for the loss of habitat. The most tragic thing for her is that the land may never be used again, at least not in her lifetime.
“It’s beautiful up there,” Stricklin said. “You wouldn’t even know what was going on.”
She blames the government for dragging its feet.
“We always felt that the state and federal government were as much to blame as Kenneth Hunter,” she said.
Sidebar: Superfund settlements timeline
For the past 15 years, the EPA has collected money from companies, municipalities, school districts, and other parties that it said contributed to the contamination at the Casmalia Resources Hazardous Waste landfill. The toxic dump was shut down in 1989 and designated as a Superfund site in 2001. After 10 settlements with hundreds of parties, the EPA is still trying to pull together the money it says is needed to clean up the site.
Here’s a list of the settlements:
- • September 2000: EPA settles with 430 waste providers (parties), collecting $26.1 million.
- • December 2001: EPA negotiates a settlement of $15.9 million with the state of California regarding its liability for wastes shipped to Casmalia.
- • February 2002: Casmalia Resources settles with the EPA for $6.9 million.
- • September 2003: 24 parties settle with the EPA for $8.2 million.
- • July 2003: the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California approves a settlement with a group of 41 major waste generators, and on August 14, 2003, the same court approves settlements with three additional parties for a total of $31.9 million.
- • May 2005: EPA negotiates $400,000 from the trustees for the estates of George and Mario Castagnola who were Limited Partners of Casmalia Resources.
- • September 2004: EPA settles with 193 parties for a total of $12.1 million.
- • April 2006: EPA settles with another 257 parties for $4.3 million, then finalizes settlements with 26 waste generators for $1.8 million.
- • 2009: EPA settles with 135 parties for $2.9 million.
- • 2011: EPA settles with 49 parties for $1,211,317.
- • 2012: EPA settles with 290 parties for $2,077,592.
- • March 2015: EPA settles with 337 parties for $1.4 million.
Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 23-30, 2015.