The residents of Seal Beach’s Bridgeport neighborhood yesterday got the words they have been waiting to hear – “the OCHCA {Orange County Health Care Agency} hereby directs ARCO/BP to excavate to at least the extent described in the CAP, and to extend the remedial excavation until the confirmation samples detect less than 0.5 mg/kg benzene or until further excavation is impeded due to off-site structures.”

At issue is the clean up of contamination from leaky underground gas storage tanks at the ARCO station located at 490 Pacific Coast Highway, Seal Beach. The determination of how ARCO/BP will go about cleaning up the site has been winding its way through the regulatory process and residents, backed up by the City of Seal Beach, have resisted ARCO’s preferred approach.

OCHCA, the lead government agency in the process, yesterday issued its determination on the approach BP/ARCO must use. The city and the residents have been pushing for what is affectionately called “dig and haul”, which is to say, dig up the contaminated soil and get rid of it. But, this would mean demolishing the gas station and it would probably cost ARCO the most money. Thus, BP/ARCO was pushing for other less disruptive ways to eliminate the contamination.

But, the County HealthCare Agency, over the signature of Richard Sanchez, Director of its Environmental Health unit, appears to have given the residents exactly what they were hoping for.
“I thought it was perfect,” Seal Beach City Manager David Carmany told OC180NEWS with regard to the County’s letter to ARCO. “In tone and in substance, it reflected exactly what I’ve heard the community and city saying what we wanted.”

According to Richard Sanchez, this is the end of the regulatory process to determine which remediation approach ARCO must use. (see related articles below). Since early on in this process, ARCO has indicated they would follow the directives of OCHCA. Thus, the next phase should be implementation.

Of course, before anyone starts digging, there are a few permits to obtain. “I’m thinking it will take several months to get through all the regulatory agencies and get all the proper permits,” said City Manager Carmany.

In addition to providing the direction the residents wanted, Sanchez’s letter also pushes ARCO along the implementation track. “Please submit a workplan for
the implementation of the excavation phase of the remediation at this site by September 30, 2010. Please begin work to obtain all necessary permits and access agreements immediately and notify this office with expected approval dates for each as soon as possible,” the letter reads.

Assuming ARCO complies with those instructions, the project will move forward in steps. “It’s going to happen in stages. The first stage will be demolition of the station, removal of the underground storage tank, digging out and hauling away to a proper facility the contaminated soil, and then a process of assessing and treating with one of these other methods,” said Carmany.

In the previous corrective action plan, ARCO indicated they would not excavate deeper than a specified depth and would not excavate beyond their property line, regardless of the levels of remaining contamination. After this basic excavation is finished, dealing with remaining contamination is referred to as “supplemental remediation.” The County’s letter provides some pretty clear direction on this subject:
“The method of supplemental remediation at this site proposed by ARCO/BP is electrical resistance heating (ERH). After reviewing the CAP, case studies, and
discussing the technology with the ARCO/BP contractor, the OCHCA finds this remedial approach unacceptable for this site…High levels of methane in the subsurface…pose a potential explosion risk. ARCO/BP has no record of implementing ERH at any of its cleanup sites, in California or anywhere else. ERH has not been used at any OCHCA LOP sites in the last 25 years. None of the case studiesthat were presented to OCHCA, or that OCHCA found independently, provided an acceptable level of assurance that the application of ERH adjacent to residenceswas appropriate with the documented site conditions in this area.

Upon completion of the excavation phase of remediation and review of the subsequent report, the OCHCA will request a workplan for implementing a supplementalremediation alternative.”

So, the big question is will ARCO comply and “immediately” start pulling permits, or will they do something else. “At this point I’d like to think ARCCO will do what the county Health Care Agency has required of them,” said City Manager Carmany. “I think they want to solve this problem and move on, so we’ll work with them to make sure that’s where we get with this.”

Last night we asked ARCO spokesperson Walter Neil the big question and he told us they had not seen the letter yet, so we emailed it to him. He called back a little later and said their email system and his Blackberry were down and he could not get any emails. We offered to send it to his home computer and we did that. Next he called back to respond, but, when we pressed him to say if they would comply and immediately start pulling permits, he equivocated and acknowledged he could not give a definitive answer without further internal ARCO/BP discussion.