The digging out and hauling away of all the contaminated dirt and ground water at the former site of the ARCO Smog Pros station on Pacific Coast Highway is basically complete, according to Orange County health officials.
The Bridgeport Technical Advisory Committee will review ARCO’s revised workplan for cleaning up the site. Utility lines stand in the path of further excavation.
That was the news 15 to 20 residents of Seal Beach’s Bridgeport neighborhood heard at a Wednesday, Sept. 13, meeting updating the public on the progress of the decontamination project.
City Engineer Michael Ho told the Sun that ARCO/BP America is waiting for the city to respond to the revised work plan.
Ho also said the city will revive the Technical Advisory Committee, a small group of Bridgeport neighborhood residents who work in environment remediation.
The decontamination project became necessary after gasoline vapor was detected in the soil near the ARCO station in 2009. Twenty-five homes were in the “study area” near the gas station. The Orange County Health Care Agency temporarily evacuated four homes after the gasoline vapor was detected.
The vapor in the ground was apparently the result of at least two leaks from underground storage tanks that occurred in the 1980s. Seal Beach residents, the City Council and ultimately the Orange County Health Care Agency called on ARCO to dig out and haul away the contaminated soil.
“Apparently it’s coming along,” said Councilman Gordon Shanks. However, he said the clean up effort was not coming along as quickly as anyone expected.
Councilman Shanks, whose district includes the Bridgeport neighborhood, said ARCO had gotten a lot of contamination out, but a lot more has to be removed. He said ARCO showed maps comparing the polluted area at an early stage in the project and now. He said the contaminated area was much smaller than before.
Shanks said the city’s responsibility was to watch over the project to protect the interests of residents.
He said this was not a city project, but a county health agency issue. Shanks said the members of the Technical Advisory Committee have made sure the county is doing its job.
Larry Honeybourne, project manager for the OC Health Care Agency, told the Sun that remediation is on-going. He said ARCO had completed the excavation at the site.
Anthony Martinez, senior engineering geologist for the Health Care Agency, said the work crew had gone down to the water level, about 15 feet.
Digging, however, has apparently gone as far as it will go.
Martinez said there were a lot of utility lines in the direction of the Bridgeport neighborhood near the site.
Robert Goldberg, a Bridgeport resident, attended last week’s meeting, said remediation at the site would probably not end “in our lifetime.”
“The vapor extraction (vacuum) system is still pulling out a lot of hydrocarbons,” Goldberg wrote in an e-mail to the Sun. He quoted county officials as saying 4,000 pounds of hydrocarbons had been removed in August. The criteria for shutting of the system: less than 1,000 pounds. The groundwater under the site is flowing downhill, causing hydrocarbons to spread into the “clean” dirt that was used to fill the site.
“Bottom line is that remediation will probably not end in our lifetime,” Goldberg said. “However, if the extraction pipes in Bridgeport can be shut off because they are not necessary anymore, at least the Bridgeport residents can be reassured that any threat their homes has been removed. There is a good chance that this will occur within the next year.”
