The road leading southwest from Santa Maria to the Casmalia Superfund site is inconspicuously marked with a sign reading “Casmalia Landfill.” It cuts through a cow pasture, and ends at a guard shack at the top of a hill. Past the gate is a small office building, and beyond that is the opening of the 252-acre, bowl-shaped landfill where cities and companies dumped toxic waste for 16 years.
The gate is open, but no one is present, and two video cameras appear to record anything that passes beyond the shack, while a sign warns “no entry” with some Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hotline phone numbers posted, but they’re outdated.
Sun media inquiries to the EPA went unanswered by press time, an apparent symptom of President Donald Trump’s temporary media blackout that prohibited anyone with the agency from speaking to reporters as well as barring any new contracts or grants, as reported by several media outlets on Jan. 24.
Because the EPA manages the site, it was initially unclear whether Trump’s recent policies would affect the residents of the town of Casmalia, which sits less than 2 miles away from the landfill. Alejandro Diaz, the community involvement coordinator for the Casmalia Superfund, also hadn’t returned phone calls from the Sun.
Resident Terri Stricklin, owner of the Hitching Post restaurant, hasn’t heard anything from the EPA yet.
“We’ll have to wait and see to see if they make any major changes until we know something more definitive,” Stricklin told the Sun.
It turns out that the Superfund won’t be affected after all, at least according to Dan Niles, an engineer for the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. That’s because it’s funded by a more than $100 million settlement from the companies that contributed waste to the landfill, which in some cases amounted to tens of millions of pounds of toxic chemicals and byproducts. Hence the term “Superfund.”
The EPA established the program in 1980 with the passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which compels polluters to fund cleanup of contaminated sites like the one in Casmalia.
Entities that contributed waste were in the hundreds, and include companies and public bodies like Hershey Foods Corporation, IBM, FedEx, the Orcutt Unified School District, and the city of Beverly Hills. They collectively contributed pesticide solvents, heavy metals, PCBs, acids, and municipal waste, as well as other waste that couldn’t be identified. All total, 5.6 billion pounds of chemical waste were sent to Casmalia between 1973 and 1989.
There are different tiers of settlements, Niles said, that are based on how much waste each entity sent to the landfill. So far, the EPA has collected more than $116 million toward the estimated $284 million that it’ll take to clean up the site. The settlements are ongoing and are periodically announced in the Federal Register. The last payout was $1.7 million in June 2016.
“The reason this site is different than other Superfund sites is because it’s funded through settlements,” Niles told the Sun. “That’s quite a big difference relative to our Superfund site.”
Casmalia is also distinguished in another way: It accepted contamination from other Superfund sites throughout California, including the 350,000 gallons of residual arsenic-cadmium, the mercury-lead-copper sludge from the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Riverside County.
The local facility was also one of nine in the nation to accept carcinogenic PCBs, Niles said.
The chemicals put the state of the groundwater and surrounding farmland in jeopardy, requiring a system of 300 wells that are constantly monitored and a runoff control system to capture contaminated rainwater.
The EPA is in charge of overseeing groundwater, Niles said, although California is involved through three state agencies—departments of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), Fish and Wildlife, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board—that work with their federal counterparts.
The DTSC is the lead state agency on the Casmalia Superfund, explained Chris Sherman, who’s listed as a DTSC point of contact for the landfill.
According to Sherman, the cleanup feasibility study was completed and approved by the EPA in April 2016. Sherman told the Sun that he’s hoping to have a community meeting about the study sometime in the summer.
Meanwhile, on Feb. 3, Trump eased reporters’ access restrictions to the EPA. Neither Niles nor Sherman was aware of any cuts in funding that would affect the Superfund. Niles is unsure if the state would take over the site if it were abandoned by the EPA.
“All of this I said can change in a day,” Niles said. “Things are changing quite a bit at the national level.”
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 9-16, 2017.