2 FIRMS SETTLE TOXICS CASE THIRD COMPANY STILL NEGOTIATING CLAIMS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

MOJAVE - Two companies have agreed to settlements that will repay California taxpayers for part of the costs of investigating soil contamination at a Mojave metal-recovery plant.

In separate settlements of a lawsuit filed in April, Commodity Refining Exchange agreed to complete a concrete cap over contaminated soil and to pay for monitoring costs, and PRG Metals Inc., a former operator of the plant, agreed to pay $50,000.

State officials said the soil contamination at the Commodity Refining Exchange site includes the carcinogen dioxin, found during an investigation that began in 1988 and spread to about three dozen Rosamond and Mojave industrial sites.

``In my view, these agreements serve to protect public health and the environment because they allow DTSC (the Department of Toxic Substances Control) to recover a substantial portion of its past costs and, in addition, ensure that the site will be fully remediated,'' James Tjosvold, chief of the department's central cleanup operations branch, said in a court filing. ``Once the concrete cap is complete, based on the information available to it, DTSC expects that there will be no further hazard presented to the public or to the environment.''

Spending more than $300,000, Commodity Refining Exchange has already built most of the cap.

Officials said state government spent more than $230,000 investigating and pursuing cleanup of contaminated soil at the Commodity Refining Exchange plant, 11817 United Street.

The settlements are expected to be approved in March by a federal district court judge.

State officials said negotiations are continuing with a third company believed to have contributed to the contamination, but a fourth corporate suspect appears to be off the hook because it has no assets.

State authorities were investigating a series of childhood cancer cases that occurred in Rosamond from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.

There have been metal-recovery operations at the Commodity Refining Exchange site since 1970, and state officials claimed that flaws in the processing or in storing ash and slag contributed to the contamination.

The settlements are not admissions of wrongdoing by the companies, state officials said in the court filings.

Both settlement decrees have provisions that would allow the state to reopen the case and seek remedies if previously unknown conditions were discovered.