California Recycling Plant Becomes Toxic Superfund Site | The Halaco Story Episode 1

Watch episode 2 here: https://tinyurl.com/5f54b2st

Oxnard is a coastal California town just 25 minutes north of Malibu, a place known for luxury homes, pristine beaches and celebrity residents. But instead of multimillion dollar mansions, the beaches in Oxnard are home to fossil fuel burning power plants, industrial operations and a government designated hazardous waste site.

This story begins in 1965 when a metal recycling plant called Halaco Engineering Co. opened its facility on the coast of Oxnard. Halaco smelted scrap metals, selling what was valuable and dumping what wasn’t into a growing slag pile on the beachfront property. Throughout its nearly 40 years of operation, Halaco’s negligent practices garnered hundreds of complaints from the community and violated various laws intended to protect public health. After finally being held accountable for illegal dumping and failure to comply with air pollution permitting requirements, Halaco was forced to cease operations in 2004, but its mark would be left on the city of Oxnard for decades to come.[1]

Halaco filed for bankruptcy and then shut down, refusing to clean up its mess and leaving a toxic mountain equivalent in volume to 250 olympic swimming pools in a community lacking the resources to fight back. The 850,000 cubic yard pile[2] is contaminated with heavy metals and radioactive materials[3]. The price-tag of a clean-up, estimated to exceed $150 million[4], coupled with the complicated nature of removing the toxic waste, has tied the hands of local officials and the EPA, leaving the site relatively unchanged for 20 years[5]. Halaco’s 60 year legacy of willful neglect will be a burden on the community indefinitely.

Today the shuttered Halaco site has been lost among California’s long list of EPA Superfund sites, forgotten by most, except a growing number of unhoused California residents, some of whom have found a refuge of last resort inside Halaco’s gates.

1) Document 1, pg 3: https://tinyurl.com/yc5ny8y2
2) Document 2: https://tinyurl.com/mr8uk2ub
3) Document 1, pg ii: https://tinyurl.com/yc5ny8y2
4) Document 4, pg 1: https://tinyurl.com/4d2sj2fc
5) Document 5: https://tinyurl.com/4csdvbpn

Video References:

U.S. Census Bureau Oxnard Demographics: https://tinyurl.com/96xhsjhf

Integrated Assessment Halaco Engineering Co.: https://tinyurl.com/yc5ny8y2

Halaco- What went Wrong: https://tinyurl.com/mhthte7s

EPA Overview: https://tinyurl.com/y6y3prss

Click the link below to access the Google Drive library containing reference documents and additional resources. If any links in this description are broken, saved PDF files are available in the document library.

https://tinyurl.com/3bpm8rx9

Click the link below to watch the entire Halaco series.

https://tinyurl.com/yc3xknwb



This series is dedicated to Carmen Ramirez who passed away on August 12, 2022. She was a beloved community leader and champion for environmental justice in Oxnard.