Kern County recently issued an injunction against Hondo Incorporated and Unico LLC. It's basically a stop work order similar to a restraining order. Environmental Health says this keeps more chemicals from coming onto the property, while they decide how to deal with the long list of contaminates sinking into the soil.
Environmental Health Director Matt Constantine says he can't tell Eyewitness News what's sinking into the ground. But after several fines and warnings from the office of Enviromental Health and County Supervisors ... the owner of Hondo Chemicals Incorporated, Jess Karr, seems to be sharing information. Constantine says "The activity he's conducting not only exceeds his land use approvals but he is conducting a land fill."
In a report Karr lists the types of materials desposited onto his property on Stockdale Highway. The list varies dramatically from 5 million pounds of brine, to 42,000 pounds of liquid latex, to more than 80,000 pounds of leachate water pumped from the bottom of land fills
Constantine says that there is a tremendous amount of unknown liquids that were received, that may in fact present an immediate threat to the ground water. In late 2007, the Board of supervisors declared hondo a public nuisance and required karr to come up with a clean-up plan.
Karr has submitted a plan and environmental Health says it's sufficient but it's just the beginning of a long process that could take many many years to clean it up, if at all. Constantine tells us "There are some cases where it is impossible to remediate a site depending on what was deposited on the ground."
Constantine worries Karr won't have the money to clean the property, Karr still owes the County 30,000 in administrative penalties plus over 20,000 thousand to Enviromental Health. In the meantime the injunction means Hondo cannot accept any more chemicals. We tried to contact Jess Karr but have not heard back. We will continue to follow this story and let you know what happens next.