Correction plan is due Feb. 15. City manager expects residents to seek nuisance abatement.
By Charles M. Kelly
County health officials are still requiring Atlantic Richfield Company to offer relocation to some Bridgeport area residents, according to Seal Beach City Manager David Carmany.
This information was made public to Bridgeport residents at a community meeting held Wednesday night, Jan. 27 at the Senior Center adjacent to the Mary Wilson Library. That same night, city staff made a similar report to the Seal Beach Environmental Quality Control Board.
According to the staff report, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment determined that relocation of Bridgeport residents was no longer required.
“The Orange County Health Care Agency will be notifying the homeowners of these results. However, this does not preclude homeowners requesting relocation directly from ARCO,” said the staff report.
Twenty-five homes are located in the “study zone” near an ARCO gas station on Pacific Coast Highway that has leaked at least twice, most recently in 2003. In August 2009, gas vapor contamination in the soil raised concerns that residents might have been exposed to cancer-causing chemicals.
Near the end of the year, some residents who lived in the houses nearest the gas station were advised by the county to move out of their homes. Those residents spent the holidays in lodgings paid for by ARCO.
As previously reported in the Sun Newspapers, county health officials had planned to notify displaced Bridgeport residents they could go home in mid-January. Then severe rain storms forced a shut down of the vapor removal system that ARCO has been using to decontaminate the soil under homes near the ARCO gas station on Pacific Coast Highway.
After the storms passed, officials tried to notify displaced residents they could return home. At least one family was contacted. It is not known if any of the families returned.
At the Jan. 27 community meeting, ARCO residents also learned what Dudek and Associates, Inc., the city’s consultant in the decontamination process, has been taking soil samples and monitoring ARCO’s efforts.
According to Carmany’s notes, Dudek reported that the ARCO team seemed to be performing well and according to industry practice.
Carmany told the Sun that Bridgeport residents seem to be waiting for the corrective action plan that ARCO must submit to the county by Feb. 15.
He said residents appear to favor digging out the gas vapor contaminated soil and hauling it away.
“This has been going on since the mid ‘80s, a long time. But the residents’ sentiments seem to be ‘enough already fix it,’ ” Carmany wrote.
The “dig and haul” option will be one of the techniques considered in the ARCO corrective action plan.
“Ultimately, I anticipate that the residents will be seeking a City Council nuisance abatement action to accomplish ‘dig and haul,’ ” Carmany wrote.
Dudek and Associates is mapping the soil contamination in the Bridgeport area.
“These maps are necessary because of the concerns that the soil vapors are traveling through ‘preferential pathways’ such as untility lines,” Carmany wrote.
The next two Bridgeport meetings will be held on Thursday, Feb. 11 and Tuesday, Feb. 23.
ARCO is providing regular updates on the Bridgeport situation online at www.bridgeportupdate.com.