ESCONDIDO —— When Steve Barry and his family moved into their house on Cimarron Terrace in south Escondido in 1987, he wondered if it was safe to eat the oranges that grew in the backyard.
"There's nothing oozing out of the ground," he said this week. "But it's hard to know what's underground."
Cancer-causing chemicals had contaminated the former Chatham Brothers Barrel Yard a couple of blocks north, and Barry was concerned at the time about the toxins making their way into the groundwater.
A plume of chemicals first detected in the early 1980s extended from the former waste oil recycling business at 2257 Bernardo Ave. to the southern edge of Felicita Park a mile south. State water quality officials were worried the plume might eventually reach Lake Hodges, a source of drinking water a mile south of the park.
A massive cleanup effort was launched in 1990, and a preliminary report released this week concludes that pumps and filters operating at the site are effectively removing toxic chemicals from the groundwater, and that "minimal movement" of the plume has occurred in the last three years.
However, the levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the groundwater close to the site still exceed federal safety standards and will continue to do so for years to come. Cleanup activities will need to continue for at least five years and probably a few decades, the report recommends.
About $20 million has been spent so far on the Chatham site by the Chatham Potentially Responsible Parties Group, a trust composed of companies and government agencies that agreed in 1992 to pay for the cleanup.
"It's time for an update," said Yolanda Fleet, who uses a well to irrigate her property near the Chatham site. "For a time, I wondered every time I checked the well water."
The report was written by the San Diego engineering firm Hargis and Associates, which has been managing soil and groundwater cleanup at the site. Hargis is working for the trust.
Where the toxics come from
Starting in the 1940s, a business owned by Robert and Thomas Chatham had processed industrial solvents, paint and oil and sold a blend of solvents called "HiKleen."
The state Department of Health Services shut down the business in 1981 when trichloroethylene, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs and other toxic substances were found leaking from storage drums into the soil. A protracted legal battle began among federal, state and local environmental agencies, the Chatham brothers and some 56 companies and government agencies identified as potentially responsible for waste material delivered to the site.
After the Chatham brothers failed to comply with a state order to clean up the site, the state Department of Health Services in 1990 removed 11,430 tons of contaminated soil and debris from the yard to a landfill in Kettleman Hills, Calif.
In 1992, those "potentially responsible parties" —— which include General Dynamics, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Hughes Aircraft and 3M as well as the city of Escondido, Quality Chevrolet and Heller Ford —— agreed to pay for construction of a groundwater treatment facility at the site. It began operating in 1994.
A 2-foot "cap," or insulator layer, of new soil was brought to the site in 1999. A soil vapor extraction system, which sucks solvents out of the soil by vacuum, was installed in 1999 and its operation continued into 2004.
The trust representing the companies now owns the land. Hargis' operation of the pumps and filters costs around $400,000 per year. About $20 million has already been spent on cleanup, according to Steve McDonald, the attorney representing the Chatham cleanup group.
Progress of the cleanup
Today three extraction wells, two at the yard and one south of it on Hamilton Lane, pump a total of about 20 gallons of water per minute out of the ground. According to the report, 55 million gallons of water have been extracted and treated since 1994 by passing the water through a filter of activated charcoal. More than 2,000 pounds of volatile organic compounds have been removed from the groundwater.
Water quality officials have dug more than 50 wells around the Chatham site to monitor the concentrations of toxic chemicals. Trichloroethylene is the most abundant groundwater contaminant at the site.
Hargis reports that since 1999 the total concentration of volatile organic compounds in the water coming from the well on Hamilton Lane has fallen from 3 grams per liter (0.3 percent by weight) to 0.16 grams per liter, a drop of almost 95 percent.
It concludes that if groundwater treatment and bacterial degradation continue, the levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the groundwater south of Hamilton Lane could fall below federal safety standards sometime between 2011 and 2030.
Although volatile organic compounds have been detected at low levels (below federal safety standards) in upstream parts of Felicita Creek, which runs roughly north-south through Felicita Park, the plume under the park has not continued to move south toward Lake Hodges, the report finds.
In a couple of weeks, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control will approve a final version of the Chatham review report, according to Ron Baker, the department's head of communications. The department still needs to have staff toxicologists and engineers look over the report, he said. Neighbors of the Chatham site should receive a fact sheet from the department after the report is approved.
A condensed history of the Chatham site is available at: http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/database/Calsites/CALP001.CFM?IDNUM=37490029
Contact staff writer Quinn Eastman at (760) 740-5412 or qeastman@nctimes.com.
