One Company's Shadowy Legacy

At a depth of 3,000 feet off the coast of Palos Verdes, California sits an expansive region filled with little life yet serious human impact long forgotten until UCSB researchers rediscovered something sinister. In this region, hundreds of thousands of barrels of presumed industrial wastes lay on the ocean floor rusting away and leaking toxic chemicals and pesticides, including DDT. Ocean dumping in this region was conducted by private disposal companies and government agencies until most of it was halted with the passing of The Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act in 1972, also known as The Ocean Dumping Act. Even though ocean waste disposal is now highly restricted, the past disposal of hazardous wastes continues to have a negative legacy of environmental impacts in the region, especially on marine life.

One company that was directly responsible for ocean dumping in Southern California was California Salvage Company.

William H. Hutchison founded a different company in 1926 called California Ship Service Company in 1926 as California Ship Service Company in San Pedro, California .¹  It was a company offering services such as cleaning ships and tanks, dumping oily ballast, and cleaning up oil spills in the nearby ports². He would later go on to found multiple related companies in the Wilmington and San Pedro areas, including California Salvage Company and William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc .³  As alluded to in the company name, William Hunter Hutchison had two sons in the 1930’s, John "Jack" Hunter Hutchison and Murray Hunter Hutchison .⁴  Both would later become directly involved in running their father's companies⁵. Their father William H. Hutchison was the head of California Ship Service for 52 years from 1926-1978 and was also the head of William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc. and California Salvage Company from their founding until his death in 1978 .⁵ 

In 1947, William H. Hutchison's California Salvage Company began disposing of industrial wastes in the Pacific Ocean under the direction of the California Department of Fish and Game, the Los Angeles Harbor Department, and the United States Coast Guard .⁶  Under this government oversight, there were few restrictions placed on companies participating in ocean dumping. One of the few requirements was to ensure that the barrels and packages of wastes sank below the ocean surface to prevent interference with maritime traffic .⁶  During this period from 1947-1961, it is estimated that 126-128 million gallons of liquid industrial wastes were intentionally dumped into the Pacific Ocean by California Salvage Co. The wastes were mostly caustic and acid refuse from oil refineries and DDT acid sludge from Montrose Chemical Corporation .⁶  If 55 gallon barrels were used for all of this waste, as was common practice at the time, there could have been approximately 2,290,909 - 2,327,272 barrels of industrial wastes dumped by California Salvage Co. during this period to account for the estimated 126-128 million gallons of waste.

In 1947, Montrose Chemical Corporation was founded in Torrance, California to primarily produce dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), which was a highly effective and popular insecticide used globally for crop protection and the mitigation of insect-borne diseases .⁷  Montrose Chemical grew into the largest producer of DDT worldwide but with this large operation there also came significant waste byproducts from the complicated process of creating DDT. Approximately 75% of this waste was pumped into the Los Angeles County sewer system with the rest dumped into the ocean east of Santa Catalina Island .⁶  Following reports of its negative environmental impacts as a pesticide, DDT was banned from domestic use in 1972, yet Montrose continued to export the pesticide internationally for clients like the World Health Organization and the Agency for International Development for limited use in areas prone to mosquito-borne illnesses .⁸ 

Montrose Chemical Corporation contracted with Hutchison's California Salvage Company for the disposal of their DDT-containing acid sludge production wastes in the Pacific ocean for approximately 14 of their 35 years of existence, from 1947 until 1961 .⁶  A timeline of various disposal methods by Montrose Chemical Corporation from 1947 until they shut down in 1983 is shown below:

With spotty record keeping by California Salvage Co., it is difficult to calculate how much waste was dumped in the ocean from Montrose Chemical Corporation. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board estimated that California Salvage dumped at least 10-14 million gallons of DDT acid sludge and upwards of 2000-3000 gallons a day during their 14 year contract with Montrose Chemical Corporation .⁶  A 1958 log (shown to the right) from California Salvage Co. shows that barrels with a 42-gallon capacity were used for the acid sludge from Montrose. If they used 42 gallon barrels for the entire 14 year contract, there could be between 238,095 and 333,333 barrels of DDT-containing acid sludge on the bottom of the ocean based on the 10-14 millions gallon estimate above. In contrast, University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) researchers estimate that over half a million barrels of DDT acid sludge are in and around Dumpsite No. 1 .⁹  This could be an overestimate because the barrels of waste between Catalina Island and Los Angeles did not all originate from Montrose Chemical Corporation.

California Salvage Co. contracted with many other companies for ocean disposal of hazardous wastes. On average they dumped 1.2 million gallons per month in the mid 1950’s, which only contained a small percentage of wastes from Montrose Chemical .⁶  Even though ocean dumping was legal and generally accepted until 1972, there still existed questionable practices within Hutchison’s California Salvage Company.

The questionable operating practices of California Salvage Company were publicly seen for one of the first times in July of 1959. While on an ocean dumping operation, a barge being towed by California Salvage Co.'s tugboat Limpiar VI exploded into flames after a gunshot ignited a 50-gallon barrel of jet fuel waste, which then ignited the other 50 drums of jet fuel waste. On that day the company was ”...dumping 130 drums of the fuel overboard from a 62-foot barge and shooting holes in those that did not sink immediately” .¹⁰  The crew also said that they, “...dumped similar cargoes of fuel about once a month.” .¹⁰  This explosive accident occurred only a couple of months before the company's ocean dumping permit was approved with the Atomic Energy Commission in September of 1959. This approach of destroying barrels of waste until they sank was a common practice for California Salvage Co. Later on, instead of rifles and bullets, they shifted to using fire axes to "hole" barrels of waste until they sank .¹¹  The company’s use of this method of disposal was not focused on the impact on the marine environment or the safety of their employees but instead to ensure the sinking of barrels to prevent interaction with maritime traffic.

In 1959, California Salvage Co. applied for a permit from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to dump low-level radioactive wastes in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 1000 fathoms approximately 165 miles off the California Coast .¹²  This permit, Nuclear Material License No. 4-5479-1, was accepted by the Commission, but the dumping was stopped for two years because of public pressure around the issue of whether or not A-waste materials should be handled in populated areas .¹³  In 1961, California Salvage applied for and received a zoning change to allow for the storage and handling of low-level radioactive wastes at a site next to a residential neighborhood in San Pedro, CA, 709-745 North Pacific Avenue, that is now part of the LAUSD Harbor Occupational Center .¹⁴ 

It is unclear based on public documents and newspaper records if California Salvage ever dumped low-level radioactive wastes in the ocean because there are no accessible records of the dumping. In 1963, they instead were disposing of low-level radioactive wastes at a regional land disposal site in Nevada .¹⁵  Their license with the AEC for receiving radioactive wastes at 709-745 North Pacific Avenue was held until at least August 28, 1969 .¹⁶ 

In October of 1961, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB) took over responsibility for regulating ocean dumping companies from its predecessors. The water quality board had multiple requirements including designated dumpsites, detailed record-keeping, and observations by staff on ocean dumping trips .⁶ 

The LA Regional Water Quality Control Board also regulated other private and public entities for ocean dumping. In 1985, they released a map of all of the known ocean disposal sites regulated at some point by a government agency (shown below). The sites are numbered 1-14 with California Salvage Company using both Dumpsites No. 1 and No. 2.

To the detriment of the ocean ecosystem, these new regulations were not strictly followed by Hutchison’s California Salvage Company or enforced by the LARWQCB from 1961-1973 .⁶  The breaking of the regulations included incomplete logs of wastes dumped, vague descriptions of wastes, and dumping of wastes outside of the designated zone at Dumpsite No. 1 .¹¹  According to an IEC report prepared for the EPA in July of 1973, “Breakable containers are holed with a fire-axe until they sink. Metal containers with liquid contents are partially emptied from the deck before pushing over the side and holed until they sink. Metal containers with liquid contents are partially emptied from the deck before pushing over the side and holed until they sink.” ¹¹  Sometimes, containers even exploded upon contact with the water.

The process that California Salvage Co. followed for dumping wastes from Montrose Chemical Corporation and other companies was as follows: “Containerized waste materials were received at...Berth 115, Port of Los Angeles, where they were loaded on a barge and towed to sea for disposal .⁶  Barges and a tugboat presumably of California Salvage Co. can be seen in the photo to the right from 1961. The photo is taken from the eastern side of Berth 115 looking towards the western side of Berth 115, where California Salvage Co. operated from.

To minimize navigational hazards to ships, the containers were perforated...to ensure sinking.” ⁶  “Waste chemicals are stockpiled at a shore facility until sufficient quantities of materials are on hand to fill the stern of the tugboat, Edna.” ¹¹  Unfortunately, this process for dumping wastes was sometimes ignored in order to cut corners and save time. Each trip to Dumpsite No. 1 would take close to 12 hours so the crews would dump short of the designated site. On three separate occasions, California Salvage Company was caught short dumping nowhere close to Santa Catalina Island .⁶  These instances are as follows:

There is no certain way to know how many times California Salvage actually made the full trip out to Dumpsite No. 1 or how many times they stayed within the boundaries of the site because mandated record keeping was spotty and the LARWQCB observed their dumping operations on only one occasion- March 30, 1973 .⁶  During this observation trip, navigation by California Salvage Co. employees was done by “dead-reckoning” with the water board supervisor unsure of their location for the actual dumping operation at what was presumed to be Dumpsite No.1 .⁶  In an analysis by the Interstate Electronics Corporation in 1973, it was said that “The length of time they are on site (4-5 hours), with no checks on position, clearly leads to doubts about staying within the area provided for the dumpsite.” ¹¹ 

One of the more troubling clients California Salvage contracted with was Atomics International, a subsidiary of North American Aviation, from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory near Canoga Park, CA. Atomics International ran the Sodium Reactor Experiment, which was an early nuclear power plant in operation from 1957 to 1964. In 1959, the reactor experienced a partial meltdown and subsequently released radioactivity into the surrounding environment and atmosphere .¹⁷  The Atomic Energy Commission and Atomics International hid the extent of the partial meltdown by limiting information released to the public for many years. The Sodium Reactor used approximately 100,000 pounds of sodium (Na) as a coolant in the system with 30,000 pounds of the consumed (and potentially radioactive) sodium disposed of by California Salvage Co. off of Santa Catalina Island for an unspecified number of years.

The barrels were packaged by Atomics International, picked up by California Salvage Co., fitted with concrete collars to ensure sinking to the bottom of the ocean floor, and finally dumped off of Santa Catalina Island, presumably either at Dumpsite No. 1 or 2 .¹⁸  The hazard with disposing of elemental Na in the ocean is that it can become “spontaneously flammable” upon contact with H₂O .¹⁸  Initially, the contents of the barrels were unlikely to interact with water, but over time if the barrels were to rust and break down, the contents could become exposed to water and cause environmental consequences including for localized marine life.

Atomics International and Montrose Chemical Corporation were only two of many companies with contracts for ocean disposal with California Salvage Co. The typical container used for ocean disposal was a drum, but the waste containers would range in size from test tubes to 100 pounds sacks to 55-gallon drums. Examples of other contracts and wastes from 1970 can be seen below:

Twenty-three pages of logs of California Salvage Co.'s ocean dumping activities were collected by Interstate Electronics Corporation from December 1, 1969 thru March 31, 1970. The descriptions of wastes were often vague and difficult to categorize, which most likely coincided with the company's failing to keep detailed logs for the LARWQCB. The sums of wastes by category in gallons can be seen below:

During an unspecified amount of time at an unspecified location, California Salvage Co. was also using a secondary location for ocean disposal. The only information readily found on this location is from the US EPA website along with a newspaper clipping from 1967. The possible area for this site can be seen in the map below:

During this time, California Institute of Technology was contracting with California Salvage Co. for disposal of hazardous wastes including outdated and contaminated liquid chemicals that were used in laboratories and classrooms, at 1000 fathoms deep off the western side of Santa Catalina Island .²¹  In the article it is stated that California Salvage Co. made this trip four times a year to dispose of hazardous wastes including wastes from California Institute of Technology. The IEC logs from 1973 show that California Technology was a customer of California Salvage Co. at least in 1970, only three years after they were apparently dumping contaminated chemicals on the western side of Santa Catalina Island.

Very little is known about this deep ocean site, but it has the potential to also contain hazardous wastes dumped in barrels similar to the known dumpsites on the eastern side of Santa Catalina Island. It is unlikely that this dump site was misidentified and confused for Dumpsite No. 1 or Dumpsite No. 2. The two known dumpsites are located on the eastern side of Santa Catalina Island in the San Pedro Basin. There are no identifiable areas east of the island that have a depth of 1,000 fathoms. The limited information would therefore suggest that there is another forgotten and poorly documented dumpsite west of Santa Catalina Island within the Catalina Basin.

In 1972, the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act (The Ocean Dumping Act) was passed which placed highly restrictive regulations on ocean dumping in waters around the United States. Ocean dumping was still allowed after this act, but it was highly controlled through a permitting process run by the Federal Government through the US Environmental Protection Agency. At this time, California Salvage had lower volumes of wastes for ocean disposal, but the Hutchison family was involved in more than just ocean dumping. The passing of this act might have had a negative impact on the disposal side of their operations, but not in their other division, California Ship Service Company.

California Salvage Company and California Ship Service Company were divisions of a larger company, William H. Hutchison & Sons, Inc. This larger company was also located in San Pedro at 709-745 North Pacific Avenue San Pedro, CA, where California Ship Service Co. was originally located. California Ship Service Co. continued to do business at both Berth 114 and 709-745 North Pacific Avenue while California Salvage Company conducted business at Berth 115, 700-745 North Pacific Avenue, and 217 North Lagoon Avenue Wilmington, CA. These three companies would soon merge into a different company that would become focused on environmental remediation, a major shift from their ocean polluting disposal operations of the past.

John Hutchison worked for California Ship Service Company as of March 2, 1961 and California Salvage Company as of 1974 .²²  According to a newspaper clipping from 1973, Murray Hutchison and his brother John Hutchison were the “...head of their own conglomeration of interrelated corporations, Hutchison and Sons Inc…” ²³  It is likely that Murray and John were leading their father’s company before it transitioned in 1977 to a new company .²⁴ 

Shown to the right is John Hutchison (middle) on the Tugboat Edna, one of the ships used to tow barges of hazardous wastes to the ocean for disposal. In 1974, three years before the transition to a new company, William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc. donated this boat to the Great Western Council for the Boy Scouts.

The Hutchison family was also involved in other businesses in California, including Industrial Tank Inc. and Industrial Trucking Corporation with Murray H. Hutchison, son of William H. Hutchison, president of both in the 1970’s .²⁵  These two companies would soon merge with William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc. to form a larger company with a new name and purpose.

In a newspaper clipping from 1977, it stated that, “two of the oldest companies in the environmental services field have been joined under a single name, adopted a new slogan and realigned corporate structure to meet the increasing opportunities and challenges generated by recognition of modern-day ecological problems. Industrial Tank Inc. and William H. Hutchison & Sons, together with their subsidiary companies, became IT Corp.” .²⁷  Below is a diagram showing the merger of William H. Hutchison & Sons, Industrial Trucking Company, and Industrial Truck Corporation along with their subsidiaries to form IT Corporation:

The headquarters of the newly branded IT Corporation were located at 336 West Anaheim Street in Wilmington, California, only a few miles from the now defunct offices of William H. Hutchison & Sons at 700-745 North Pacific Avenue in San Pedro. “The companies were involved in environmental cleanup decades before the term was popular and the blue of their work perceived by the public. They pioneered systems, techniques and equipment for tank cleaning, control of oil pollution, transportation and disposal of waste, and recycling and reprocessing of oil...” .²⁷ 

The irony in this statement is that the predecessor company California Salvage did not necessarily pioneer methods in transportation and disposal of waste, but rather was a company that was directly responsible for the large-scale pollution of the waters around Santa Catalina Island. As a company, California Salvage's main approach for disposal of highly toxic and hazardous wastes was to puncture the barrels before throwing them overboard into the ocean and they were caught breaking regulations imposed by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board by short-dumping, designating their own second dumpsite without approval, and keeping and submitting poor records. If anything, this predecessor company to IT Corporation was working against the advancement of waste disposal methods by being careless and polluting the environment, not figuring out how to clean it up.

Murray H. Hutchison, son of William H. Hutchison who was originally involved with California Salvage Company and William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc., was the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of IT Group Inc., which included IT Corporation and International Technology Corporation and all of its subsidiary companies from 1976 until 1996 when he retired from this company .²⁸  Under his general leadership, International Technology Corporation ran multiple toxic waste land disposal sites called Montezuma Hills and Vine Hill .²⁹ 

Murray Hutchison's brother, John H. Hutchison, who was also involved with California Salvage Company and William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc., was the Vice President of Facilities and Equipment as of 1988-1989 for IT Corporation .³⁰  Both brothers who began their work in the family business of William H. Hutchison & Sons Inc. and its subsidiaries, California Salvage Company and California Ship Service Co. went on to take leadership roles in IT Corporation which started from their father's companies merging together.

In a statement from a bid proposal by IT Corporation, their company is described as, “...a nationally pre-eminent, full service environmental consulting, engineering, and remediation firm with headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…” .²  Another aspect of IT Corporation’s business plan was in hazardous waste design and environmental remediation which were both things that were not highly considered in their earlier companies with California Salvage in fact being responsible for the exact opposite. Eventually, IT Group Inc. was founded and became the parent company of the individual subsidiary companies including IT Corporation and International Technology Corporation .³¹ 

Some of the clients of International Technology Corporation included the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Defense, and the US EPA's non-enforcement branch .²  This information is not surprising as International Technology Corporation (IT Group Inc.) was one of the largest environmental firms in the country before they filed for bankruptcy in 2002 .³²  It is interesting to think about California Salvage’s history as an ocean polluting disposal firm in comparison to the company formed after and championed as a leader in environmental cleanup and operating hazardous waste landfills. 

On April 25, 2002, The Shaw Group Inc. purchased IT Group Incorporated and most of its assets and subsidiaries for $52.5 million after IT Group Incorporated had filed for bankruptcy .³²  From here, The Shaw Group Inc. created a new subsidiary of its parent company called Shaw Environmental & Infrastructure Inc. which combined their existing environmental contracts and operations with IT Group Inc .³¹ 

Although William H. Hutchison & Sons and California Salvage Company no longer exist as companies in their original states, the negative impacts of their employees and actions still exist at the bottom of the ocean east and possibly west of Santa Catalina Island especially from the dumping of DDT containing acid wastes.

The effects of the ocean dumping by California Salvage Company have not been well researched because a large focus has been on the Palos Verdes Shelf. This site is not part of California Salvage Company’s known dumpsites 1 and 2 and is independently highly contaminated with DDT and PCBs from the Whites Point sewer outfall and the Los Angeles County Joint Water Pollution Control Plant. California Salvage was caught short-dumping at the Whites Point Outfall both on March 5 and March 12, 1968 although it is unclear what impact this has had on the Palos Verdes Shelf since the dumping is not documented beyond those two dates and the overwhelming majority of DDT waste present was dumped in other ways .⁶ 

From 1951 to 1970, Montrose Chemical Company dumped DDT wastes down their sewer from their facility which amounted to estimates of 110 tons of DDT. The wastes flowed from Montrose Chemical Corp. to the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant and finally out of the Whites Point sewer outfall on top of the sediments on the Palos Verdes Shelf (EPA Palos Verdes Superfund Fact Sheet .³⁴ 

The marine life present near the Palos Verdes Shelf Superfund site and Dumpsites No. 1 & 2 include mantis shrimp, horn sharks, leopard sharks, sea birds, and moray eels .⁸  Based on previous studies related to the Palos Verdes Shelf cleanup efforts, marine mammals were shown to “...have some of the highest concentrations of DDT in the world…” with sea lions experiencing high rates of cancer from DDT exposure .⁸  At this point, it is unclear if these high levels of DDT in marine life are only from the Palos Verdes Shelf contamination or if DDT and its metabolites have been taken up the food chain from the barrels of DDT wastes at 3,000 feet below the ocean’s surface that were the result of the California Savage Company disposal operations.

DDT and its metabolites DDD, DDMU, and DDE have a larger and long lasting impact on marine life because they are bioaccumulating chemicals. The metabolites of DDT are also toxic and tend to accumulate and persist in marine food chains .³⁵  According to California State Senate Bill AJR-2 from the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality, “DDT is a bioaccumulating chemical, meaning that it is stored in the fatty tissue of animals, and concentrations increase farther up the food chain. It is toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates and threatens the reproduction of predatory birds by causing eggshell thinning…” .⁸  DDT most likely enters the aquatic food chain through organic particulates that are taken up by phytoplankton and Zooplankton then eaten by fish and eventually mammals and birds .³⁶ 

Because DDT and its metabolites are bioaccumulating, fish, mammals, and birds can have high levels of chemicals stored in their bodies. The White Croaker is one fish that has been found to have high levels of DDT and is on a list of fish to avoid eating if caught near the Palos Verdes Shelf .³⁷  DDT is also present around the barrels of DDT waste that were dumped from 1947-1961. In limited studies, it was found that concentrations of DDT directly around the barrels were over 40x higher than at the Palos Verdes Shelf .⁸ 

DDT was only one of many hazardous wastes and chemicals dumped at Dumpsites No. 1 and 2 and it is unclear what impact the other hazardous chemicals have had on marine life in this area because dumping records were spotty and vague in the descriptions of chemicals dumped. California Salvage used descriptions such as waste chemicals, waste acid, and waste materials to describe the substances dumped so there is no easy way to understand what was dumped.

Based on publicly available information, it seems that it has never been revealed that the Hutchison family’s LLC companies (William H. Hutchison & Sons, Inc. and California Salvage Company) were involved in the dumping of DDT and other industrial wastes off of the east side of Santa Catalina Island and possibly 25 miles West of the island. The main focus has been on Montrose Chemical Corporation because they were the originator of the wastes.

Arguably, some of the focus should be on California Salvage Company even though the dumping operations were legal and permitted because the company chose to disobey government imposed regulations on ocean dumping. They were sometimes caught dumping in the wrong locations, submitting insufficient information on wastes dumped, not submitting shipping logs at all, and designating their own dumpsite at Dumpsite No.2. Evidence suggests the wastes from California Salvage could be anywhere between the Port of Los Angeles and the actual designated dumpsite off of Santa Catalina Island because there was insufficient government oversight by both the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board and its predecessors at the California Department of Fish and Game, the Los Angeles Harbor Department, and the United States Coast Guard.

There is also the problem of the poorly documented dumpsite 25 miles west of Santa Catalina Island that was investigated as a possible Superfund site at some point and where outdated and contaminated laboratory chemicals were dumped by California Salvage for CalTech.

There are many layers to the story of the dumping of industrial wastes and DDT production wastes with multiple pointing back to William H. Hutchison & Sons and their division, California Salvage Company which became defunct in the late 1970's and transitioned into become IT Corporation with no mention of California Salvage Company after the transition. Even after all of this, there is still more research and investigation required to fully uncover the people and companies involved as well as the total environmental impact on marine life in the Southern California Bight.