Update: The city of Seal Beach received a copy of the ARCO corrective action plan Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 16.
Bridgeport residents agreed to provide the consulting firm hired by Seal Beach with the results of contamination testing at the Thursday, Feb. 11 community meeting.
According to Seal Beach City Manager David Carmany, residents of the Bridgeport community agreed to share their contamination test results with Dudek and Associates and with the city of Seal Beach.
The community meeting, which was held in the Senior Center adjacent to the Mary Wilson Library on Electric Avenue, was the latest in a series of meetings to keep residents up to date on the efforts of ARCO to decontaminate the soil in the area surrounding the ARCO gas station on Pacific Coast Highway.
Forty-six Birdgeport residents attended the meeting, according to notes by Carmany.
Soil near the gas station has been found to be contaminated with gas vapors. Twenty-five homes are in the “study zone” near the gas station.
There are 175 homes in the Bridgeport neighborhood. Even homes that are not in the “study zone” may have suffered an indirect impact from the soil contamination.
Residents who want to sell their homes will be legally required to disclose the fact their homes are near a toxic site.
Representatives of ARCO attended the meeting, as well as Bridgeport residents, city officials and members of the Orange County Health Care Agency.
“If/when additional data is received from the residents, it will be added to the contour maps,” Carmany wrote in an e-mail to the Sun Newspapers. “This is becoming critical.”
Carmany said the OC Health Care Agency is “aggressively” pursuing the decontamination process. “They have required that ARCO complete the corrective action plan by February 16th. This is a hurried schedule; normally violators are given 90-180 days for this task,” Carmany said.
When the CAP is available, the document will be distributed electronically and a hard copy will be made available in the Mary Wilson Library.
“The corrective action plan will address the vapor intrusion into the homes and ways to correct the problem, including ways to treat ad dispose of the ground water,” Carmany said.
Exposure to gas vapors can increase a person’s risk of developing cancer.
There is no information yet from the California Cancer Registry about the impact of the soil contamination on the health of Bridgeport residents.
Carmany said the city had hoped to have a report by the end of February. He said the city now expects the Cancer Registry report in March.
At last week’s community meeting, a clear majority of residents indicated they preferred digging out and hauling away contaminated soil—a position taken by the majority of residents who attended the last Bridgeport community meeting.
Residents also made it clear they wanted vapor extraction equipment be placed as far away from homes as possible.
The Bridgeport Technical Advisory Committee meeting will be held at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 23 in the city manager’s conference room.
The next Bridgeport neighborhood meeting will be held at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 24, in the City Council Chambers.
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