It’s Out From Under Them

For much of the last 20 years, Patrick and Andrea Rooney enjoyed small-town life in Meiners Oaks, where they owned a home and raised six children.

It was a mostly quiet and comfortable existence. While Andrea home-schooled their kids, Patrick ran a small, self-service carwash on their two-acre property.

But in recent years, family members began suffering from unexplained rashes, hair loss, respiratory problems and in the case of Andrea, multiple miscarriages.

Last summer, on a doctor’s order, they abandoned their home and moved to nearby Oak View.

In November, the Rooneys filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that Ventura County allowed toxic chemicals at its Ojai maintenance yard to flood the groundwater table under their home, located across California 33.

The family contends that the county knew of the contamination, which stemmed largely from leaking underground fuel tanks, since the late 1980s, and failed to stop its spread or warn residents of the health risks.

“[They] have lived over a toxic plume of contaminants that ... has an estimated volume of 15 million gallons,” the lawsuit contends. “The toxic ‘bull’s-eye’ of this plume is, at times, only 6 feet below the surface of the Rooney family home.”

The county, which lost a bid this month to have the Rooneys’ lawsuit dismissed, has filed a response denying any wrongdoing. A hearing in the case is scheduled this month, while the trial is set for December.

Leroy Smith, chief assistant county counsel, said the county has spent $1 million over the last decade cleaning up the maintenance yard of hydrocarbons from leaking gasoline tanks. If any other chemicals were present on the Rooneys’ property, he said, the amounts were not enough to cause health problems.

Moreover, the source of such chemicals could be debated because degreasing solvents and other chemical agents from Rooney’s carwash business could have seeped into the groundwater, Smith said.

“There is no persuasive evidence that there is a connection between this leak and any of the problems they have suffered,” he said.

The county has operated the maintenance yard off the highway -- on a slope above the Rooney home -- since the 1930s. The yard included two underground fuel tanks, which contained gasoline and diesel.

The lawsuit alleges that the underground tanks began leaking at least 15 years ago. The leaking fluid, the suit contends, contained benzene, a toxic component of gasoline.

In a June 13, 1989, memo obtained by the Rooneys’ attorney, Dave Bender, through a public records request and provided to The Times, Ventura County officials acknowledged a fuel tank leak at the Ojai yard and subsequent groundwater contamination.

The memo sent from Peter S. Pedroff, former director of the county’s General Services Agency, to then-Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg, outlined the severity of the problem:

“Unfortunately ... we have found that we not only have a fuel tank that is leaking, but it has more than likely contaminated the groundwater table. At the present, we are uncertain as to the extent of the contamination. The fact that groundwater contamination exists may generate some adverse publicity and, depending on the severity, may result in a significant cleanup cost.”

The Rooneys contend that county employees used toxic degreasers and solvents to maintain county equipment and improperly disposed of the hazardous wastes in the ground. In addition, chemicals stored and released at the maintenance yard contained mercury, and lead-contaminated soil found on site contained “levels nearly 10 times the safe level as established by the state,” according to the lawsuit.

But Ventura County Risk Manager Joe Sanchez said that the county had tested the soil on the Rooneys’ property for years and found no significant problems. Sanchez said that the family was always informed of the testing.

“The county’s position was that there was no imminent threat as far as pollution is concerned,” he said. “There is a plume there but not enough to cause a significant risk to human health.”

The Rooneys’ suit also alleges that contaminated water sits beneath nearby St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, the Ojai Seventh-day Adventist Church and school, an apartment complex and numerous other homes and businesses. But none have joined the lawsuit.

In 1990, the county hired Ventura-based Applied Environmental Technologies, which is also named in the suit, to clean up its maintenance yard. The Rooneys’ attorney obtained a decade-old memo sent from the firm to the county’s Environmental Health Department, which gives an assessment of groundwater contamination at the yard as outlined in a Dec. 1, 1989, report.

“The conclusions of the report were that petroleum hydrocarbon contamination had apparently migrated off-site,” according to the Dec. 31, 1990, memo.

The memo states that the county removed the two underground fuel tanks at the yard and installed wells on the site to begin monitoring the levels of groundwater contamination. In March 1991, the county’s contractor stated in a memo to county officials that groundwater samples continued to show the presence of hazardous contaminates.

By 1993, Bender said, the county learned that the contamination had reached the Rooney property.

And by 1995, well testing showed that the contamination had crossed El Roblar Drive and was moving further past the Rooney land, according to Bender.

In 2003, the county, which had been sending the Rooneys regular reports for nearly a decade about its groundwater testing program, asked the family to sign an agreement to allow the county to conduct a cleanup operation on their property, Bender said.

But the family found the reports and cleanup request too complex and technical, so Rooney decided to call an attorney. At the same time, he said, the family’s doctor advised them to move off the property.

During the intervening years, Rooney said his 11-year-old son suffered extreme migraines; his 21-year-old daughter, Andrea, was hospitalized with respiratory problems; his 7-year-old daughter, Mary, lost much of her hair; and his wife, Andrea, suffered three miscarriages.

The suit accuses the county of negligence for failing to warn the family of the health risks and for failing to put together an adequate cleanup plan.

“It’s pretty well documented that our property was contaminated by [the county],” Rooney said.

At the very least, he said, he wants an apology from the county, money to cover the family’s medical bills and the ability to sell the land that he bought from his father and where he had hoped to retire.