Decontamination efforts at the former site of the Seal Beach ARCO Smog Pros station are behind schedule, according to a county health official.
“They’re about six weeks behind,” said Richard Sanchez, of the Orange County Health Care Agency.
The underground storage tanks beneath the ARCO station on Pacific Coast Highway had leaked at least twice since the 1980s.
The county had considered the site decontaminated years ago. However, in the summer of 2009, evidence of gasoline vapor contamination was found in the soil beneath Seal Beach’s Bridgeport neighborhood homes near the gas station.
The discovery led to the temporary evacuation of four homes. Ultimately, the county health agency ordered ARCO to decontaminate the soil and ground water by excavation or “dig and haul.”
The ARCO station was bulldozed earlier this year.
Sanchez said there were several reasons the decontamination effort was behind schedule.
“It wasn’t one thing, it was many small things,” Sanchez said.
He said equipment failures and safety issues were cited as reasons for the delay.
Darrell Fah, operations project manager, specifically raised safety issues in a July 12, 2011 letter to the county health agency. “As we have consistently stated, the project work will be completed in a manner than insures the safety of all site workers and the public, and the work is completed correctly,” Fah said.
“We are making every effort to maintain our schedule as initially presented to OCHCA. However, as you know, construction work requires flexibility to accommodate unforeseen changes/delays which occur during the work process,” Fah wrote.
“During the construction, we have encountered a number of delays including working in the driveway of PCH Plaza property as previously mentioned, equipment deliveries, a number of safety stop works major staff change with RECON and damage to a sewer lateral,” Fah said.
RECON is the company that ARCO/BP America hired to perform the excavation project. PCH Plaza is private property owned by another company.
B.V. Castillo, a spokesperson for BP America, said the company was committed to doing the job right and at a pace that is safe for the community and workers. She said the job would be completed by the end of the year.
Orange County and Seal Beach officials gave Bridgeport neighborhood residents an update on the project at a community meeting on Tuesday, July 26. Sanchez told the Sun that ARCO representatives declined to attend the meeting.
Bridgeport resident Ray Zeoli, who works in environmental remediation and is a member of the Bridgeport Technical Advisory Committee, said everyone who attended the meeting was pleased with the way the Health Care Agency is handling the matter. Zeoli was reluctant to put a figure on the number of people who attended the meeting. He agreed the audience was made up of not much more than 25 people, most of them members of the Technical Advisory Committee and the Community Action Committee.
Apparently one concern residents have is that the work won’t be completed before the rainy season.
Sanchez told the Sun that the county will hold ARCO to the corrective action plan for decontaminating the site.
Zeoli said that participants in the meeting were told that actual excavation of the site won’t begin until the end of August or the start of September.
As for the fact the project was behind schedule, Zeoli said that in construction work “you really have to plan for unplanned things.”
The delay did not seem to upset Zeoli. “You know what? We waited 25 years. Six weeks is OK,” Zeoli said.
Mario Iacoboni, another Bridgeport resident and Technical Advisory Committee member, was more concerned with the timeliness of information getting to Bridgeport area residents.
He said last week’s meeting was the first one they had had in two months. Iacoboni said county officials intend to hold ARCO to finishing the work by the end of the season.
