Garden Grove is moving out of emergency mode after all evacuation orders were lifted Friday, and officials are now focused on cleanup, waste removal and who will ultimately pay for the response to the chemical tank malfunction at GKN Aerospace.
Nearly 50,000 people were displaced over Memorial Day weekend when responders rushed to keep an overheated storage tank from exploding or spilling up to 7,000 gallons of methyl methacrylate. For families and businesses that lost days of normal life, the next question is no longer where to go; it is how the city, the county and outside agencies will absorb the cost.
The Orange County Health Care Agency said Friday that the hazardous material incident was “transitioning out of the emergency response phase,” with the county’s Certified Unified Program Agency leading cleanup alongside the health agency. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is providing technical support, while the South Coast Air Quality Management District will oversee air monitoring as crews move into site cleanup and waste removal.
That shift matters because the money trail is still open. Garden Grove Councilmember George Brietigam said OCFA would serve as the county entity acting as a liaison for recovery of the cost, and he noted that “every city is going to have different costs.” Garden Grove paid $29 million this fiscal year for its contract with the Orange County Fire Authority, and the city has already reported an estimated $728,000 in incident-related costs to OCFA.
County officials say their own bill is still climbing. OC Fifth District Supervisor Katrina Foley said the county is anticipating roughly $500,000 in expenses, including medical supplies and evacuation materials. But the final number will not be clear until after Wednesday, when organizations involved in the evacuation and recovery effort are due to submit expenses through WebEOC; after that, the costs go to the state Office of Emergency Services for approval.
Michelle Anderson said cities can also submit invoices to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for reimbursement, underscoring how many layers of government may be pulled into the cleanup. Even so, the key bill remains unresolved, including the water used to cool the tank, and the question of which agency or private entity will ultimately carry the full response and cleanup tab is still unanswered.
For Garden Grove, the emergency may be over, but the accounting has only begun. By the time the WebEOC deadline passes and the invoices are reviewed, officials should know much more about the price of preventing one overheated tank from becoming a far larger disaster.
