On Monday the Seal Beach City Council heard from the Bridgeport residents anxiously awaiting cleanup of the BP/ARCO gas leak in their neighborhood. Yesterday the New York Times published an article which quoted U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, of California, whose committee is investigating the Deepwater Horizon accident. The NY Times reported “BP cut corner after corner to save a million dollars here and a few hours there,” Mr. Waxman said. “And now the whole Gulf Coast is paying the price.”

Does the same fate lurk ahead for Seal Beach? Only time will tell, but according to Richard Sanchez, Director of Orange County Environmental Health, the process for determining how BP/ARCO will go about cleaning up the contamination at their gas station at 490 Pacific Coast Highway, Seal Beach, is coming to an end.

“There was an initial CAP {corrective action plan}, and now this is a revised CAP – we don’t look at having another one – this is it,” Sanchez told www.OC180NEWS.com. “We are looking at the speediness of the cleanup action as one of our main criteria.”

Sanchez would not give his official reaction to the revised CAP until after the public comments are in. But, he did tell us “I think the inclusion of excavation as one of the options was a step forward.”

The City of Seal Beach held a public hearing during their council meeting on Monday in preparation for the city’s official response to the latest CAP from BP/ARCO. The city’s response is 17 technical pages long and might be good reading if you are having trouble sleeping. But, one issue stood out in public testimony.

There seems to be a consensus that BP/ARCO will dig up the contaminated soil from under the gas station and truck it away – dubbed the “dig and haul” option. But, as one resident put it, “the devil is in the details.”

One detail which is causing concern among some residents is that “dig and haul” will be limited to the property lines of the gas station, and therefore will not adequately remediate the contamination which is outside the stations property lines.

The City’s response to the BP/ARCO CAP states “It is not acceptable for ARCO to limit excavation activities by stating, ‘Soil samples will be obtained from the excavation floor and sidewalls for laboratory analysis to document the level of cleanup that has been achieved.
However, these data will not be used as a basis to expand the excavation limits. The excavation dimensions as proposed in this alternative are fixed by… {among other things}…property boundaries’.”

The CAP goes on to justify the limitation of excavation to the property boundaries because the offsite contamination will be resolved by other means. But the City disagrees, writing “the limits of excavation must be based on the soil action levels to be dictated by the Orange County Health Care Agency, whether the contamination is on-site or off-site, as is the case for the "block wall" area. Essentially, ARCO needs to "follow" the contamination and remove it, as is standard practice for soil remediation projects.”

The essential question here is, if the CAP is accepted as is, does that mean that BP/ARCO will have effectively limited the excavation area to their property? Richard Sanchez told us emphatically “no.”

BP/ARCO proposes to use a cleanup method called electrical resistance heating, erh, for contamination beyond the property lines. ”That is what they are proposing - that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what’s going to happen,” Sanchez told www.OC180NEWS.com. “They submit a plan to us – this is their proposal for what they’d like to do.”

We asked Sanchez if after the initial excavation there was still contamination beyond acceptable limits, would the prohibition on excavation beyond property lines placed in the CAP by BP/ARCO mean they would not be required to excavate further? He said “if sample results{after initial excavation} revealed that the contamination is offsite, meaning off the property line, and there is more work to be done to remediate the contamination, then we would look at alternatives to best deal with that contamination, whether it be excavation, or some other alternative method.”

The Orange County Health Care Agency, OCHCA, will hold a public comment meeting regarding the CAP and Director of Environmental Health Richard Sanchez will attend. The official notice of the meeting indicates “OCHCA will accept comments regarding the CAP during the public meeting scheduled for July 21, 2010, at the Mary Wilson Library, 707 Electric Avenue, Seal Beach. The public may provide verbal comments to the OCHCA at 8:00 PM.”

The public comment period ends July 23, 2010 and Sanchez said he would issue his decision within about three weeks. Although he would not be tied down to a specific date, he implied the process of obtaining construction permits could start shortly after his decision is published.

“We review everything we get, and then we come out with our decision on what’s going to happen next,” said Sanchez. “We’re taking all things into consideration, and one of the big things that we’re taking into consideration is what the residents want. That’s a very important aspect to our decision-making process.” He continued “Regardless of what’s in the CAP, our job is to make sure that the clean up levels are to appropriate levels.”