The public has until Wednesday, March 24 to comment on the Preliminary Corrective Action Plan for cleaning up the ARCO gas station site at 490 Pacific Coast Highway in Seal Beach.
The soil has been contaminated as a result of at least two leaks since the 1980s.
In mid-2009, it became public knowledge that the soil in the Bridgeport neighborhood near the gas station had been contaminated with gasoline vapors.
Residents of the 25 homes near the gas station have been concerned about exposure to cancer-causing chemicals. Residents of the other homes in the 175-house neighborhood have expressed concern about the loss of their property values as a result of being located near a toxic site.
The Orange County Health Care Agency gave Atlantic Richfield Company until Tuesday, Feb. 16, to submit a plan for cleaning up the soil under the gas station. ARCO met the deadline.
Deanne Thompson, public information and communications administrative manager for the OC Health Care Agency, said that while the document had been available for public review since mid-February, the county would “officially” start the 30-day comment period on Wednesday, Feb. 24. “However, if we receive a comment after the 30-day period, we will still take that into consideration,” she said.
A Jan. 14 letter from the county health agency to ARCO said there would be a public meeting held during the 30-day period to allow the public to comment on the plan.
A copy of the corrective action plan will be available at the Mary Wilson Library on Electric Avenue.
Copies are available for purchase at $125 each at the Seal Beach City Clerk’s office.
The Preliminary CAP was prepared by Stantec Consulting on behalf of ARCO.
In a Feb. 2 letter to the county, Kelly Brown, Stantec’s principal geologist, wrote that the plan must be considered preliminary because ARCO had not yet completed the soil and groundwater investigations at the site.
“The data from these two investigation programs is vital to properly prepare a Final CAP that will provide an evaluation of subsurface conditions and propose the most appropriate remedial technologies for site clean up,” Brown wrote.
The Preliminary CAP suggests four alternatives for cleaning the site. Alternative 1—“Full Site Excavation and Off-Site Soil Vapor Extraction,” meaning the gas station would be torn down, the soil dug up and hauled away for treatment at another location.
The consensus of those Bridgeport neighborhood residents who have attended community meetings about the ARCO site seems to favor this alternative.
According to Stantec, excavation would require six to 12 months for public notices, planning and getting permits.
This would be followed by four to six months of work, followed in turn by a year of groundwater monitoring.
Estimated cost to ARCO: about $3,036,000 to $5,360,000.
The CAP went on to say that Alternative 1 would be disruptive to businesses adjacent to the gas station, might disrupt utilities, would create a large volume of truck traffic on PCH and 5th Street and, finally, could cause increased air pollution.
Alternative 2—“On-site Air Sparging and On- and Off-Site Soil Vapor Extraction,” which means injecting air under pressure into the impacted groundwater.
Stantec said this process could be expected to take less than two years.
However, “for estimating purposes,” the company proposes a range of two to six years.
Estimated cost to ARCO: $833,000 to $1,953,000.
Alternative 3—“On-Site In-Situ Chemical Oxidation and ON- and Off-Site Soil Vapor Extraction,” which means using adding chemicals to groundwater to break down the hydrocarbons that have contaminated the area.
“The chemical oxidation process converts the hydrocarbon contaminants to harmless carbon dioxide and water,” the Preliminary Corrective Action Plan said.
The plan also said the technology is well-documented, but new. This approach could take two to five years, although Stantec believes it would in fact take less than two years. Estimated cost to ARCO: $858,000 to $1,714,000.
The CAP said Alternative 3 appeared to be the fastest way to clean up the site.
Alternative 4—“On-Site Dual-Phase Extraction and Off-Site Soil Vapor Extraction,” which means extracting hydrocarbon vapor and groundwater from the ground to treat both soil and groundwater.
Stantec expects the clean up goal could be met in two years, but is officially estimating two to six years.
Estimated cost to ARCO: $1,223,000 to $2,238,000.
In related news, ARCO recently notified the city of Seal Beach that it would not provide city officials with the results of tests taken inside the homes of Bridgeport residents.
In a letter to Seal Beach City Engineer Michael Ho, ARCO Environmental Business Manager Darrell Fah pointed out that ARCO has publicly said it would respect the privacy of Bridgeport residents and only share the testing data with the residents and with the OC Health Care Agency.
Fah suggested that the city of Seal Beach ask the county health agency if it was willing to make all the information available to the public.
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