California County, Property Owners Reach Agreement on Settlement

Over the past few years, an Atascadero, Calif., junkyard has racked up some $3.5 million in unpaid fines from the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department for a variety of hazardous materials violations.

They include having open containers of hazardous waste and failing to keep records of how the business disposed of materials such as old car batteries.

The amount of fines makes North County Auto Wreckers likely the most serious Health Code violator in county history, according to the Public Health Department.

But last week -- months after an administrative law judge backed the county -- the junkyard property owners agreed to pay $100,000 in fines, clean up the site and evict the business, said Jeff Poel, who supervises the county's hazardous materials inspections. The cleanup is likely to start this fall.

The settlement marks another chapter in a decade-old battle between the county and the junkyard.

"This is one of the worst headaches we've had," Poel said. "It's been difficult because of the complexity of all the violations and the fact that the tenant is so defiant."

Dozens of cars sit amid overgrown weeds on the site, located at 6501 Via Avenue.

A man who answered the phone at North County Auto Wreckers told The Tribune that the business owners -- James Payne and his son, Daryl Payne -- did not want to comment. Landowners William and Rosella Vetter of Atascadero could not be reached Tuesday.

Even after being citied for about a dozen infringements, county officials said the business failed to clean up its act or pay the fines.

For example, officials said the junkyard has refused to move an illegal underground storage tank that may be seeping oil into the water basin. In 2001, the city of Atascadero cited the business for an illegal burn and substandard wiring.

The business has been cited for nine major violations, assessing $155,000 in initial fines, according to public health records.

Since 2001, it had to pay an additional $3,000 for each day it failed to remedy the problems --quickly adding up to millions.

In another quest to spur the business to clean up violations, Atascadero's community redevelopment agency sued the business owners and their landlords two weeks ago, hoping a Superior Court judge will force the business to clean up.

Under a 1990 state law dubbed the Polanco Redevelopment Act, redevelopment agencies can seize polluted land, clean it up and then purchase the property for fair market value minus the cleanup costs.

At this point, the agency is just interested in forcing a cleanup. It has no plan to acquire the land through eminent domain, said Roy Hanley, city attorney.

He said Atascadero is concerned that, if the business doesn't run a cleaner operation, hazardous waste could seep into the adjacent Atascadero Creek, which connects with the Salinas River.

"It's a very bad spot to have a wrecking yard," Hanley said.

Poel, the county public health official, said about every 20 months his agency inspects each of the more than 1,000 businesses in the county that use hazardous materials. These include junkyards, manufacturing plants and auto repair shops.

More than 70 percent of the county's businesses are cooperative with quickly fixing violations.

It's important that these inspections happen for two reasons, he said. First, it's critical to protect humans and the environment from hazardous materials, Poel said. Secondly, without code enforcement, violators could have a competitive business advantage.

"Business organizations tell us, 'Please step up enforcement,' " Poel said. "It's very costly to keep up to code, and then the guy next to you is a not a complier and he can sell his stuff 40 percent less than you can.

"For us it's very important to deal with these things as fast as we can." San Luis Obispo Tribune