Even if Halaco is included on a list of Superfund sites this year, the cleanup of slag laden with metals and radioactive isotopes the bankrupt company left behind near Ormond Beach could take more than a decade, according to an official from the Environmental Protection Agency.

At a meeting Thursday Wayne Praskin, the EPA's project manager for its Superfund Program in the western United States, told members of the Ormond Beach Task force that remediation of hazardous waste at Superfund sites takes 11 years on average.

That doesn't mean that dealing with the 40-acre Halaco site would take that long, but Praskin seemed to want to temper expectations of the three dozen people at the meeting — many of whom have been waiting decades for action.

Praskin used the meeting, attended by members of the task force as well as Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long and a representative of Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, and several state agencies, to fill people in on the process for inclusion in the National Priorities List, referred to as Superfund.

Payment, disposal are issues

For many in attendance, the main issue was whether the former owners would pay for the cleanup and whether the waste would be hauled away and the area restored. That will be determined during the assessment period, Praskin said. There is also likely to be some kind of survey to determine if pollution from the site caused any adverse health problems for the workers or neighbors, he said.

If the site is listed, an assessment would be made of the potential environmental and health risks presented by the estimated 750,000 cubic yards of waste built up over 40 years of operations there. Halaco halted operations in 2004, leaving behind a slag heap covering 28 acres, four stories high in spots.

The waste includes elevated levels of lead, arsenic, barium, cadmium, aluminium, magnesium and beryllium. The waste also is sprinkled with radioactive isotopes like thorium and cesium. Two weeks ago, federal workers found some of that radioactive material along a berm near the wetlands next to the facility, resulting in the closure of the wetlands at the end of Perkins Road. On Thursday, crews scooped the last bits of radioactive material from the wetlands and moved it over to the waste pile, where it was buried. The wetlands will likely be open to the public again sometime next week.

May have been there decades

The gray material apparently got there in the late 1960s, when the company pumped its waste into the Oxnard Industrial Drain.

For about a decade the company had a permit to recycle magnesium that included thorium alloys, which were used by the military and aerospace industry. It stopped accepting the material in the late 1970s, according to records.

The EPA has been working at the site since February on a $4.5 million effort to stabilize the waste and ensure that it doesn't erode into the adjacent wetlands or the ocean. That work will be finished at the end of April, said Rob Wise, EPA's on-scene coordinator.