EPA Testing Waste From Old Smelting Plant in Oxnard

Ragged berms and cracked plains spread over 28 acres top a 45-foot-high mass of compacted gray ash. Nothing grows there -- not even a weed.

For decades, community activists have said that the waste pile and the now-shuttered foundry in Oxnard that created it are a scar on the coast and a threat to an adjacent lagoon brimming with bird and sea life.

Their goal of seeing the pile removed, and the entire area restored as a wetland, gained unexpected momentum last week with the arrival of a team of inspectors from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Using sensitive monitoring equipment, geologists are testing nearby residential tracts, soil, sand, groundwater, the air and even fish from the lagoon for evidence of radiation and other pollutants.

If an analysis shows that the former smelting plant and its wastes pose significant public or ecological risks, the 43-acre property could qualify as a federal Superfund hazardous-waste cleanup site, bringing much-needed federal dollars with it.

"We're looking at everything under the sun," said Mitt Mitguard, a spokesman with the EPA's emergency response section. "But the bottom line is we won't know what's there until we analyze all of the data."

Testing will continue for another week, said Robert Wise, the EPA's on-site coordinator. By September, the agency should know whether contaminants are serious enough to warrant a federal cleanup.

Community advocates are thrilled at the EPA's intervention. Local activists and environmentalists have long supported removing what they say is a relic of California's industrial past.

"It's a very important turning point," said Jean Harris of Ventura, a longtime leader in the fight to shut down the plant. "Getting rid of that pile, should it be found to be to toxic, will be enormous."

Harris has no doubt that high levels of pollutants are present and that they are leaching to nearby lands. She recalls the time she watched as workers at the plant dumped waste solids into unlined settling ponds. Within days, she said, plant life on adjacent ground began dying.

"It's really maddening what they've gotten away with," Harris said.