Ascon Properties Inc

Starting next week, work crews will begin hauling out tons of hazardous waste buried at the former Ascon landfill, officials said Thursday. The $25-million cleanup effort has been in the planning stages for seven years, and is expected to take 18 months to complete, said Allan Hirsch, spokesman for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Removal of toxics from the old Ascon oil-waste dump, where a company plans to build nearly 600 houses, will take about three years, development officials have told the City Council. Representatives of NESI Investment Group, a Lawndale development company, met Monday afternoon with City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga and council members. NESI officials briefly outlined building plans for the site. They said that removal of toxics, which began in January, will continue through the fall of 1995.

Ascon Properties moved one step closer Tuesday night to building hundreds of condominiums on its contaminated former landfill behind Edison High School. The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4 to 3 in favor of a General Plan amendment changing the property's designated land use from public, quasi-public and institutional to residential, with the possibility of up to 600 condominiums. The actual number of condominiums will be decided later.

Starting next week, work crews will begin hauling out tons of hazardous waste buried at the former Ascon landfill, officials said Thursday. The $25-million cleanup effort has been in the planning stages for seven years, and is expected to take 18 months to complete, said Allan Hirsch, spokesman for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Removal of toxics from the old Ascon oil-waste dump, where a company plans to build nearly 600 houses, will take about three years, development officials have told the City Council. Representatives of NESI Investment Group, a Lawndale development company, met Monday afternoon with City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga and council members. NESI officials briefly outlined building plans for the site. They said that removal of toxics, which began in January, will continue through the fall of 1995.

The information for this listing was unavailable for several months. The South Coast Air Quality Management District has responsibility to control air pollution in the area. It has the power to seek court-imposed fines against polluters of from $25 to $25,000 a day based on such factors as the extent that emissions exceed legal limits, the potential danger to the public, whether the violation was intentional, accidental or due to negligence and the company's history of violations.

Toxic, hazardous wastes in the Ascon landfill in Huntington Beach pose a serious public health threat, so the owners should be ordered to clean it up, state pollution officials said Friday. People who chronically inhale the increasingly strong odors are threatened with nausea, eye and skin problems, general weakness and respiratory tract irritation, according to an Orange County Superior Court lawsuit, filed by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

A judge Wednesday ordered a partial cleanup of the Ascon landfill in Huntington Beach, calling for one pit there to be capped within two weeks. Acting at the request of state health and anti-pollution agencies, Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour signed a preliminary injunction against Ascon Properties Inc., the firm that owns the site.

Six months after heavy winter storms turned a long-closed Huntington Beach landfill into a soupy, toxic mess, an emergency cleanup is underway amid neighbors' health concerns. In February, workers pumped nearly 4 million of gallons of rainwater from the site. But the damage had already been done to the 38-acre Ascon landfill, near Magnolia Street and Pacific Coast Highway, half a mile from the beach.

Ascon Properties moved one step closer Tuesday night to building hundreds of condominiums on its contaminated former landfill behind Edison High School. The Huntington Beach City Council voted 4 to 3 in favor of a General Plan amendment changing the property's designated land use from public, quasi-public and institutional to residential, with the possibility of up to 600 condominiums. The actual number of condominiums will be decided later.