Two million tons of hazardous waste are generated in California each year. Around 100,000 public and privately-owned facilities contribute something special to the state environment—something on the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s hazardous waste list of 800. The DTSC, one of five departments and boards within the California Environmental Protection Agency,  manages hazardous waste. It oversees and performs cleanup duties at contaminated sites, helps to develop new technologies for environmental protection while also encouraging pollution prevention, and provides businesses and the public with regulatory assistance. On Nov. 2, 2010, California voters passed Proposition 26, making it harder to fund a department using regulatory fees. According to a UCLA Law School study, 65% of the department’s $195.8 million annual budget is funded by industry fees of the kind targeted by Prop. 26.

Who We Are and What We Do (DTSC website)

The roots of the Department of Toxic Substances Control reach back to the early 1970s with creation of a four-person unit in the Vector and Waste Management branch of the Department of Health  Services. The first Earth Day celebration in 1970 had put the environment in the national spotlight although Love Canal, the first widely publicized hazardous waste disaster, was still six years away. The California Hazardous Waste Control Program was established within the department in 1972 to implement a program created at the federal level. One of its first tasks was to survey the existing hazardous waste scene with a focus on regulation, but it quickly became apparent that a problem existed with already-abandoned sites and that a cleanup plan of action was needed.

By 1978, the Hazardous Waste staff had grown to 70 and its Unit status was upgraded to Branch. Approximately 5,000 sites were identified  by the Abandoned Sites Program and formed the branch’s core efforts. Legislation gave the branch the authority, for the first time, to grant permits, thereby providing a mechanism for in-depth inspections. That year, the Stringfellow Acid Pits in Riverside County burst into the news when a rainstorm flooded an abandoned site loaded with hazardous waste dumped there for years by a dozen of the nation’s most prominent companies. Children frolicked in the polluted water as it washed into flood channels. Two years later,  Stringfellow was named the most polluted waste site in California and shortly afterward two top officials in President Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency were found guilty of mishandling Superfund money and were forced to resign along with 22 others.

The Hazardous Waste branch was renamed the Toxic Substances Control Program in 1981 and took the lead in cleanup activities at Stringfellow in 1983. State legislation throughout the 1980s, including establishment of the California Superfund Act in 1984, contributed to an expanded program agenda and by 1988 the staff had grown to 833. Annual funding doubled to $103 million between 1986 and 1988. In 1988, the federal government announced the first of three rounds of military base closings that would have significant impact on California, home to the most bases in the nation. But before the sites could be transferred to local government, a hazardous waste issue would need to be addressed. Many of the sites were listed on the state and federal government's Superfund lists.

California established the state Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) in 1991 and reorganized all of its environmental regulatory programs. The Toxic Substance Control Program was transferred to the new agency, renamed the Department of Toxic Substances Control and given responsibility for the investigation and cleanup of hazardous waste at 100 military bases and defense sites about to be decommissioned. The department also embarked upon a multi-faceted approach to bringing rehabilitated urban properties, brownfields, back into use by encouraging owners and developers to participate in cleanups using loans, liability incentives and regulatory simplification. The following decade also saw the beginning of a new focus for the department as it moved beyond just dealing with existing hazardous waste problems and looked for ways to reduce the creation of waste.

History of DTSC (Official website)

Brownfields Remediation Program (pdf)

The Department of Toxic Substances Control regulates hazardous waste, cleans up existing contamination and searches for ways to minimize toxic material produced in California. 

The department defines a toxic substance as containing properties, such as ignitability, corrosivity or reactivity that make them dangerous to humans and the environment. Toxins might be found in liquids, solid materials or contained gases. Used oil also falls into the department’s toxic parameters. Nearly 1,000 engineers, scientists and support staff  oversee companies and individuals for the department, which works closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The department also interacts with the EPA regarding “Superfund” sites that are located within the state.

Regulating Hazardous Waste Managers

The department oversees people who manage hazardous waste and ensures they follow state and federal requirements. It has issued permits to more than 130 commercial facilities to treat, store and dispose of hazardous waste.  Another 5,000 businesses that perform lower-risk waste treatment are subject to a streamlined regulatory process. The department tracks hazardous materials from their genesis to their disposal and ensures compliance with its regulations through inspections and enforcement. DTSC's Criminal Investigations Branch has the only law enforcement officers in CalEPA. They are authorized to investigate, search and even arrest people who are allegedly violating the Hazardous Waste Control Law.  These officers work with the federal EPA, the FBI and other law enforcement personnel on environmental issues and abuses.

The department oversees the hazardous waste activities of groups operating at the local level  through the Certified Unified Program Activites (CUPA), providing technical assistance and training. And it facilitates proper disposal of household wastes. Over the years, the agency has expanded its operations to include the regulation of commercial products including toys, jewelry and food packaging as it pertains to toxic substances contained within them and the exposure of humans and the environment to these potential toxins.

Site Cleanup

An estimated 90,000 properties in the state are know or suspected to be contaminated. They include former industrial properties, school sites, military bases, small businesses and landfills. Some of these are “brownfields,” often-idled sites in cities that contribute to urban blight. The department oversees approximately 220 hazardous substance sites at any given time and completes on average 125 cleanups a year. It lists potentially contaminated sites within the state on its interactive EnviroStor database.  It operates a Voluntary Cleanup Program, an Expedited Remedial Action Pilot Program and the State Superfund that deals with sites for which there is no cleanup option through a responsible party.

California is home to about one-third of U.S. military bases that have already been or are being closed by Congress. The department's Office of Military Facilities oversees the investigation and cleanup of more than 1,000 former defense sites in the state, many of which might contain toxins and even unexploded ordinance. 

The department works with local authorities to clean up illegal drug labs (2,000 a year), hazardous substance spills related to transportation and natural disasters. It examines new, existing and proposed school sites to ensure they are environmentally safe.

Legislation, Regulation and Policy Review

The department operates primarily under the authority of the federal Resource, Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 and the California Health and Safety Code. It reviews and monitors as many as 200 legislative bills each session that may affect its activities. From these laws, it develops regulations, policies and procedures. The department is also subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1970, which requires agencies to identify the significant environmental impacts of their actions and to avoid or mitigate those impacts, if feasible.

Infrastructure

The department has regional offices in Sacramento, Berkeley, Glendale, and Cypress and satellite offices in Clovis and San Diego. As of March 2011, it employed 189 hazardous-substance scientists, 110 engineers, 41 geologists, 20 toxicologists, and 10 industrial hygienists among its nearly 1,000-person staff. DTSC concentrates scientific operations at the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory, an analytical chemistry laboratory with facilities in Berkeley and Los Angeles that provides services for federal, regional and state operations. A staff of 55 information systems analysts and programmer analysts conduct applications programming and development, manage local and wide area networks, troubleshoot desktop computers and maintain the department's office automation system. In addition, they ensure that DTSC's website is technically sound and in compliance with the governor's E-Government Initiative.

Public Participation

The department communicates with the public about its activities in a variety of ways. It keeps a staff of 30 specialists who conduct public meetings, hearings and panel discussions while distributing public notices and fact sheets to residents of areas affected by DTSC activities. It maintains a Regulatory Response Office to respond to inquiries from the regulated community, environmental firms, other agencies and the public at large about department issues. The DTSC director formed an external advisory group in 1999 that provides a forum for various constituent representatives to have input with the department.

DTSC: What We Are (Official website)

Locate Cleanup Sites and Waste Facilities (EnviroStor database)

Household Hazardous Waste (Official DTSC website)

Only 11% of the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s budget comes from the state’s general fund. The bulk of the department’s funding comes from regulatory fees, cost recoveries and penalties related to hazardous substances. About 16% is federal money.

A little more than half the department’s budget is spent on its Hazardous Waste Program, which implements the state site cleanup laws and the federal Superfund program. This involves oversight of approximately 1,000 hazardous substances release site investigations and cleanups and monitoring of long-term operations and maintenance activities at approximately 200 sites where the cleanup process has been completed. Additionally, the department is responsible for ensuring compliance with the terms of the 469 land use restrictions now in place on properties throughout the state.

Just under one-third of the department’s money goes to its Hazardous Waste Management Program, which regulates the generation, storage, transportation, treatment and disposal of toxic material. These funds are spent on oversight of 124 permitted facilities managing hazardous waste, approximately 980 registered businesses transporting hazardous waste and more than 620 facilities/generators subject to corrective actions. This hazardous waste program includes more than $1.8 billion in financial assurance.

About one-sixth of the department’s funds pay for administration and one-tenth goes to the Science, Pollution Prevention and Technology Program. The latter’s activities include providing scientific leadership in the areas of: green chemistry, pollution prevention and hazardous waste source reduction; analytical and environmental chemistry; biomonitoring; human and ecological exposure and risk assessment; industrial hygiene and workplace safety; innovative environmental technologies development; and nanotechnology issues.

The proposed budget for 2011-2012 projected a 7% decline in funding from the year before.

Top 10 Contractors: The DTSC’s largest service contractors in 2012, according to the State Contract & Procurement Registration System (eSCPRS) and verified by the department, were:

Department of Toxic Substances Control  Budget  (FY 2011-2012)

2010 Fee Summary (pdf)

Santa Susana Field Laboratory

In July 1959, gases with 459 times more radiation than emissions at Three Mile Island in 1979 were intentionally vented at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Ventura County, California, to prevent the total meltdown of a nuclear reactor. A press release at the time noted, “The fuel element damage is not an indication of unsafe reactor conditions. No release of radioactive materials to the plant or its environs occurred and operating personnel were not exposed to harmful conditions.”

That was the first and only notification that an environmental disaster had taken place until it was discovered in 1979 by UCLA student Michael Rose while sorting through an archive. The Santa Susana lab site was owned by Atomics International, a division of North American Aviation, and used by the Atomic Energy Commission for nuclear research. The company was eventually merged into Rocketdyne, which Boeing acquired in 1996 when it purchased Rockwell International. Three other main areas of the lab were devoted to rocket testing, which polluted the land and groundwater with the toxic rocket fuel oxidizer perchlorate and the engine solvent trichloroethylene. NASA (451 acres) and the Department of Energy (290 acres) both operated facilities on portions of the property.

In 1989, a routine survey by the U.S. Department of Energy found radioactive and chemical pollution at Santa Susana and the California Department of Toxic Substances  Control got involved, becoming the lead agency responsible for overseeing the cleanup. But 50 years after the nuclear emergency, battles still rage over cleanup at the 2,849-acre site located on the edge of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County and at the headwaters to many local watersheds, including the Los Angeles River.

In 1999, the department directed Boeing to remove soils contaminated with dioxin, PCBs, solvents and other waste at a spot onsite called the Sodium Burn Pit. The contamination in soil remained a source for potential movement to surrounding areas and to groundwater in the bedrock below. In 2000, the department entered into an agreement with Boeing to prepare an environmental impact report in anticipation of a hazardous waste cleanup.

In 2002, the department identified the toxic chemical perchlorate in local groundwater and the next year linked it to Santa Susana. An estimated 800,000 gallons of the known-carcinogen Trichloroethylene (TCE) were used to clean engine parts there before and after the firing of 30,000 rocket engines. This ultimately leached into the groundwater forming several plumes as well as impacted several areas of surface waters. TCE was detected in 355 of 425 monitoring wells sampled at the site.

The Department of Energy and NASA agreed in September 2010 to clean up their portions of Santa Susana by 2017 according to standards set in a 2007 state law that were far more stringent than federal law. Boeing had filed a lawsuit one year earlier denying the state law applied to it. Despite the suit, the state continues to negotiate with Boeing over the cleanup.

Complaints about the intensity of the department’s efforts to investigate the problems at Santa Susana and compel Boeing to clean up the site surfaced during a 1999 probe of allegations that the state Department of Health had suppressed a cancer study of residents in the area and had cooperated with company officials to try to get rid of an independent citizens oversight group.  The DTSC was tapped to conduct the investigation, but the co-chairman of the allegedly aggrieved oversight group was skeptical. “The DTSC is as captured by Rocketdyne as is the DHS,” said Daniel Hirsch.  “What is needed is a thorough house cleaning of both agencies.”

In 2006, Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks complained about the “lackluster performance by regulatory agencies” and “the recent appointment to the head of DTSC of an industry attorney whose law firm defends Boeing’s SSFL, all show that the public trust is not being upheld.” Parks was referring to Director Maureen Gorsen, who had been a partner at Weston, Benshoof, Rochefort, Rubalcava & MacCuish LLP in Los Angeles (now Alston & Bird) for five years. After her tenure at DTSC she returned to Alston & Bird where she is again a partner.

In 2009, community activists were bitterly split over the removal of Norm Riley as the department’s head of the Santa Susana project. The 25-year DTSC veteran, who had been the project director since 2007, promptly retired and later had some harsh words for his former employer. In an email to one activist, he characterized himself as “a subordinate who serves at the pleasure of appointing powers in an organization where obfuscation, abdication of authority, collusion, and other contemptible behaviors currently trump honesty and integrity which the public rightly expects and deserves.” 

In June 2010, a community group dedicated to the investigation and cleanup of Santa Susana accused the DTSC of interfering in its efforts. Referring to a “very serious gap in the existing public process,” the group chastised the department:  “Instead of trying to drown us out by more empty promises of new systems available from DTSC, how about engaging with the communities instead of competing with us?”

Rocketdyne and the L.A. River (Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education) (pdf)

Historical Documents (Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition)

Santa Susana Overview (DTSC official website)

Santa Susana Fact Sheet (DTSC official website)

Contamination Overview (Fact-Archive)

50 Years After America’s Worst Nuclear Meltdown (Investor Village)

A Timeline (H2Oh No!!!)

Meltdowns and Horrible Accidents (An interview with Daniel O. Hirsh)

Proposition 26

Looming over the the department and all state environmental and public health entities is Prop. 26, passed by Californians in the November 2010 election. Prop. 26 expands the definition of “tax” under California law. Consequently, some fees and other charges may no longer be enacted by a simple majority vote of the legislature. A 1997 California Supreme Court decision made a distinction between regulatory fees and taxes. Prop. 26 would erase that distinction and require, instead, a two-thirds supermajority. State law already requires a supermajority to pass a budget or a new tax. Prop. 26 applies to “any change in state statute” that occurred after January 1, 2010.

One study out of UCLA Law School conducted before the election concluded that Prop. 26 would “undermine the establishment of stable funding streams for key state environmental efforts, like the [DTSC’s] Green Chemistry Initiative and the Global Warning Solutions Act, that have already been enacted but that are not yet well funded. … It would threaten future regulatory fees.”   

According to UCLA's analysis, 65% of the $195.8 million annual budget of the Department of Toxic Substances Control is funded by industry fees of the kind targeted by Prop. 26. "There are risks we haven't yet regulated seriously: nanotechnology chemicals, endocrine disrupters, pharmaceutical residues in our water," said Sean Hecht, director of UCLA's Environmental Law Center. "Prop. 26 will make it much tougher to make polluting industries deal with these emerging risks."

The independent Office of the Legislative Analyst predicted that the law would cost the state about $1 billion but did not elaborate on what funding would be lost.  Its report pointed out that the effect of the law’s various provisions won’t be known until after the courts have weighed in. At least one law professor thinks the entire law may be unconstitutional.

Fiscal Effects of Prop. 26 (Legislative Analyst’s Office) (pdf)

Paying for Pollution (UCLA School of Law)

Lawyers, Lobbyists, Politicians Scramble (by Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times via Consumer Confederation of America)

The department failed to make a January 1, 2011, deadline for approving Green Chemistry Initiative regulations. As a result, the Green Ribbon Science Panel, a group of experts that advises the department, has suggested that its role be re-evaluated. To date, the panel has followed an “advice and comment” mode of operation but is proposing  more of a “working session” model where it takes on specific topics in collaboration with the staff.  To that end the panel broke up into three groups and each has scheduled separate meetings.

Green Ribbon Science Panel (Official DTSC website)

Panel Member Biographies (Official DTSC website)

Reconsideration of Panel Role (Co-chair memo) (pdf)

The Green Chemistry Initiative

In April 2007, the Schwarzenegger Administration launched the Green Chemistry Initiative, an effort to minimize the use of hazardous materials in the design and manufacture of consumer products. The initiative mirrored efforts nationally and around the world to utilize a fundamentally new approach to environmental protection, transitioning away from managing toxic chemicals at the end of their lifecycle, to reducing or eliminating their use from the start. About 18 months later, the governor signed legislation requiring the Department of Toxic Substances Control to create a Toxics Information Clearinghouse accessible to the public and adopt regulations establishing a process by which chemicals in products may  be identified and prioritized for consideration as chemicals of concern. Both of these objectives were to be completed by January 1, 2011. The initial list of priority chemicals was scheduled for release in March 2012 followed in September 2013 by a rundown of products that use those chemicals.

Business interests were skeptical and expressed concern as the process of regulatory formation proceeded. "It's just not workable," said Roger Bernstein with the American Chemistry Council. He warned that it was too much, too fast and that under the current proposal, the presence of a chemical in a microscopic quantity would be enough to keep it out of the state. "It could be a job killer," Bernstein said. "And, it could throw commerce into helter-skelter."

After another 18 months of hearings, public outreach and deliberations that included environmentalists and business, a draft report was released in June 2010. Some business interests professed to be unhappy with what they considered overly strict environmental regulations, although their chief lobbying group, Green Chemistry Alliance (co-founded by the Chamber of Commerce), spoke of it in glowing terms and noted that environmentalists were far more unhappy than they were.

The Alliance was right. “The proposed regulations read like a chemical company’s wish list,” said Renee Sharp, director of the Environmental Working Group. More than 50 environmental, public health, consumer, social justice and labor advocates signed a letter that said the draft regulations “fall far short of meeting the worthy goals of the Initiative.”  Forty-seven organizations, including the League of Women Voters and the Consumer Federation of California, signed a letter protesting the process. “Without public participation at every stage of the process, the Green Chemistry Initiative will become a closed conversation between industry and the Department.”

After 45 days of public hearings on the proposals, a revised draft report was released by the DTSC and another 45-day clock started for public discussion. Environmentalists were still not happy, but now the Green Chemistry Alliance of businesses made its own dire predictions. The new regulations had “critical flaws” and “rules that simply will not work in the real world.” The Alliance worried about “a troublesome lack of clarity,” the blank check taxpayers were being asked to sign and a possible “penalty for green innovations.”

The final regulations were released in November 2010 and a firestorm erupted. Environmental groups claimed they had been blindsided by a total rewrite of the regulations that bore little resemblance to those drafted over a two-year period. Throughout the review process, dating back to 2007, the administration had argued against passage of various environmental bills before the legislature “until the Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency has developed a comprehensive set of recommendations pursuant to the CalEPA Green Chemistry Initiative.” Now the critics claimed the administration was executing a “bait-and-switch.”

The changes were made without notifying or seeking input from the public. Even the Green Ribbon Science Panel, which the law established to advise DTSC in developing the regulations, was left out of the process. The public was given only 15 days to comment on the latest draft. Maziar Movassaghi, acting director for the DTSC, defended his department’s work. He said the changes were made to streamline the process. “We took out some duplicative steps and some steps that might stifle innovation.”  

Environmentalists complained that third-party experts hired to review products no longer have to be state certified. Without certification, they said, manufacturers could potentially hire each other to review their products. But Movassaghi said this change was made to ensure there were enough independent reviewers available.

Critics feared the regulations would be a large step backward for environmental safety  “because many aspects of the gutted California program are actually worse than the flawed and outdated federal 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act.” They worried that the regulations would actually reverse progress because they make it easier for manufacturers to replace known harmful chemicals with others that have not yet been found to be safe. They said the regulations addressed only chemicals in the final product while ignoring those used in the manufacturing process. And they objected to the burden of proof for toxicity resting with the regulators and not the manufacturers. Megan R. Schwarzman, MD, MPH Associate Director of Health and Environment, Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry wrote: “The revised regulations … would not achieve their most basic goal: to promote the development and adoption of safer chemicals, products and manufacturing processes, according to the principles of green chemistry.”

In December, the Department of Toxic Substances Control announced it was going back to the drawing board and would miss the January 1, 2011, deadline for approving the regulations. "We thought it would be better to get it right, rather than just getting it done," director Movassaghi said.

What Is Green Chemistry? (Official DTSC website)

Green Chemistry Wiki

Schwarzenegger's Chemical Romance (by Michael Collins, LA Weekly)

Schwarzenegger Backs Down on Gutting of California's Green Chemistry Initiative (by Michael Collins, LA Weekly)

Miriam B. Ingenito, 2014 (acting director)

Debbie Raphael, 2011-2014

Leonard E. Robinson, 2011

Maziar Movassaghi,  March 16, 2009 – February 2011 (acting director)

Maureen F. Gorsen, January 9, 2006 – March 13, 2009

B.B. Blevins, July 27, 2004 – June 30, 2005

Edwin F. Lowry, March 22, 1999 – July 12, 2004

Jesse R. Huff, February 7, 1995 – March 21, 1999

William F. Soo Hoo, January 31, 1992 – January 20, 1995