A massive slag heap at Ormond Beach, laden with heavy metals and sprinkled with radioactive isotopes from decades of metal recycling, poses an immediate threat to human health and the environment, according to documents released by the EPA this month.

Crew members in white hazardous-materials suits and wearing respirators began digging back the leading edge of the 40-foot-high, waste pile that was taking up about 28 acres at the former Halaco Engineering plant, Monday.

For much of the week, two big yellow backhoes and two bulldozers pushed and hauled piles of dirt away from the property line just where the mound touches a wetland and where soil and water samples showed that both heavy metals and radiation had migrated.

The work is meant to stabilize the dusty gray waste built up there during four decades and stop the metal dross — as well as such things as particles of thorium-232 in the heap — from leaking and drifting into the adjacent habitat. The federal government stepped in after, it said, the current owners failed to act in a timely manner. It wanted to put protections in place before winter rain and wind caused more runoff and erosion from the site.

Already the stabilization effort has triggered criticism for being too expensive and "unnecessary."

More importantly, this first step at cleaning up the 500,000 cubic yards of waste piled up on the property is offering a preview of what is likely to be the bitter battle to come. The Environmental Protection Agency is in the midst of deciding whether to include the land, 40 acres in all, on the nation's list of Superfund sites. Created by Congress as part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, Superfund designation allows the federal government to step in, clean up sites and then track down and charge those responsible for the mess. Estimates for cleaning up the Halaco site range anywhere from $10 million to $70 million.

Disagreement with data

"I've heard the $10 million, or $30 million, or $70 million estimates, and those numbers are just way, way off the mark," said Dick Sloan, president of Chickadee Remediation, which expects to offer a plan to clean up the site within a month.

Sloan, whose company specializes in cleaning up polluted property then developing it, said he doesn't disagree with the EPA's data concerning the contamination, "but when I look at (the EPA's) data I don't see the same risks they see," he said. "I've seen a lot worse. This is not a nasty site. Visually it's nasty, and it has a terrible reputation, but you have to look at the health risks and the risk to the environment. It's not what I would consider high. The radioactive isotope levels are low."

Federal officials said that indeed the radiation is of less concern than the heavy metals, but that both present very real threats. The EPA's memos and extensive sampling data for the first time show the extent of the pollution at the old Halaco Engineering facility, which operated as a metals recycling facility from 1965 to 2004.

"I think John Q. Public is terrified of the idea of radiation," said Rob Wise, the on-scene coordinator for the EPA, "but the radiation here is not a tremendous hazard. It is more an issue for the cleanup."

A bigger issue is the heavy metals on the site and how they might affect sensitive wetlands and wildlife such as the endangered snowy plover or tidewater goby.

Fence to stop trespassing

However, both the heavy metals and radioactive isotopes do present some risk through inhalation from the dust kicked up there, Wise said.

When scientists from the EPA tested soil, air and water in and around the site last spring, they also saw joggers running through the area, dirt bikers riding over it and plenty of evidence — footprints, bike tracks and graffiti — suggesting that people regularly played there, according to Wise. There's an apartment complex less than a mile from the site.

The EPA crew has since erected a fence around it to stop trespassing. Wise said he hopes that moving the waste pile back from the property line and covering it with a natural fiber fabric will prevent toxin elements from continuing to contaminate the adjacent wetlands, lagoon and property. "We wanted to get in there before any more rain could erode the pile," said Wise.

The interim work, which could stabilize the waste pile for another three years, is expected to cost $2.5 million to $3.9 million.

"That's $2.5 million that they're wasting," said Chickadee's Sloan, who estimated he could have stabilized the waste pile for $300,000 to $500,000.

He said his plan would have been part of an overall cleanup that he thought, if approved, could be completed within a year and cost much less than any estimates he's seen from the federal government. He doesn't believe that a half-million cubic yards of waste has to be hauled to a landfill somewhere. Sloan said he doesn't disagree that the property is polluted, but said it doesn't pose an imminent threat.

Chickadee's position in the matter offers another wrinkle in who might end up paying the bill for what is likely going to be a multiyear cleanup effort. Chickadee bought the property last September for $2.6 million, as part of a liquidation sale in Halaco's bankruptcy case. Chickadee sold the property three days later to developer Alpha Omega, but held onto the liability for cleanup.

The company specializes in turning around polluted land, said Sloan, who said he has had experience working on 70 problem sites, including dozens of Superfund sites. The company does something called "double closing," indemnifying both the new owner and the old owner from any long-term environmental liabilities.

Where liability lies

However, the question of liability isn't up to future or past owners to decide, said Sara Goldsmith, an EPA attorney in San Francisco. The EPA, along with a half-dozen other state and federal agencies, put in claims against Halaco in bankruptcy for unpaid fines and future liabilities.

"We're looking at all responsible parties, but it's kind of too early to say where liability lies or how much that might be," Goldsmith said.

On Wednesday, Sloan was at the site talking to Clarence Haack, the patriarch of the family that operated Halaco, negotiating the sale of the remaining 11 acres where the buildings, smelter and yard now stand.

Haack, sitting at a desk in an office at the old plant that now looks as if it had been inundated with floodwaters and ransacked, said the family had recently paid about $500,000 of the estimated $900,000 it cost the EPA to clean out such things as old drums of chemicals being kept on the plant property and other potentially hazardous material.

Who will ultimately pay to clean up the huge waste pile on the 28-acre site adjacent to the plant isn't up to him to say.

"That's up to the EPA," said Haack, who has other worries.

In December a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, David Seror, filed a complaint against Haack, his sons Robert and John and former Halaco General Manager David Gable, alleging the four principal shareholders took out money from the company and failed to meet the obligations of cleaning up the site.

There was "cash for insiders," but the four in turn burdened the Halaco property with an "enormous pile of waste" with little money left over to pay to clean it up, according to the trustee's complaint filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Barbara.

The attorney representing the Haacks in the case did not return calls this week.

According to news accounts, John Haack and his family started another magnesium recycling facility called MagPro in Camden, Tenn., two years ago. However, Clarence Haack said the family was just looking into that possibility.

Fending off regulatory action

Attorney Daniel Cooper of the group Clean Water, who is representing the Environmental Defense Center and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper in a suit against Halaco, said the company and its owners have always been very good at "gaming the system" and have spent upward of $6 million on litigation fending off regulatory action over the years.

The question of who will pay for the cleanup and how much that might be is still up in the air.

Sloan was confident that the site could be cleaned up and turned around for far less the tens of millions some have estimated it will cost. "I won't say what we think it would be, but I can say it's much less than $10 million," said Sloan.

Beyond that, Sloan said, there is no need to place the site on a Superfund list. He said there were past efforts to list the site, but that it never was deemed bad enough.

"There's a scoring system where you have to have a score of 28.5 to be considered for listing," Sloan said. "They never got above 6."

However, federal officials said Sloan is way off the mark. The EPA's records on the Halaco facility go back to 1979, but they show a much different record, said Dawn Richmond, the National Priorities List coordinator for Region 9.

Decision expected by April

On that first contact, the agency only did a preliminary assessment, but it was back in 1983 for a site inspection and again in 1992 for a more thorough assessment, according to an EPA Superfund information database. Richmond said she didn't know where Sloan got his information, "but he's wrong," she said.

The so called "golden cutoff" is indeed 28.5, but the Halaco site scored above that number. It could have been chosen in 1992 for listing, but because several state agencies were involved in enforcement actions there, the EPA begged off. It wasn't until last year that the EPA again got involved, according to Richmond.

The decision on whether to include the Halaco property on the Superfund list is expected by April. The EPA recently received a letter from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office saying the state didn't oppose the listing.