Grant To Assist in Costly Cleanup of Dumpsite Turned Ballfields

April 24, 2009

Sign on San Diego

OCEANSIDE - Oceanside has received a state grant of nearly $730,000 to help pay for a $1.5 million cleanup of the city-owned French Field, so the itinerant Vista American Little League can play baseball back home by 2011.

The 10-acre site southwest of Oceanside Boulevard and Melrose Drive was used as a dump – first by the Vista Sanitary District and then by the county – from 1931 to 1967, and then it was turned into ballfields. In 2005, French Field was closed because ash from the old burn dump was resurfacing.

Since then, the Little League's young ballplayers have been using other fields, most recently John Landes Park in Oceanside.

A 2008 study to evaluate the health risks identified 58 chemicals in the soil, according to a city press release, but "exposure to those chemicals would have a negligible cancer risk that is deemed acceptable by the federal Environmental Protection Agency."

Nevertheless, officials decided a cleanup was needed. The city already has spent about $640,000 to assess the site.

"We just cannot risk anyone's health," Rosalie MulÈ, a member of the California Integrated Waste Management Board, said yesterday at a City Hall news conference to announce the grant.

The board issued the grant to the city. Where the rest of the funds to pay for the $1.5 million cleanup will come from is undetermined.

The city is in "ongoing discussions" over responsibility for the old landfill, said attorney William J. Snyder, who represents the city in the talks.

"We will be able to use this (state grant) to start the remediation," Snyder said.

The cleanup plan recommends covering the field's three diamonds with soil to prevent exposure to low levels of lead and exposed landfill debris, and paving the parking lot and certain slopes of adjacent Loma Alta Creek.

The cleanup funds would not be used for rebuilding ballfields, although city officials said they hope to reopen French Field by 2011.

"We did not think that this was actually going to happen," John Aguilera, president of the Vista American Little League, said at the conference.

The field has served Little Leaguers since 1994 and Vista Bobby Sox League softball teams before that. Aguilera said the Little League's 200 members come half from Vista and half from Oceanside.

French Field is hidden in an industrial area near the Vista city limits. It is overgrown with weeds, but an entry sign with the Vista American Little League logo remains, as do light standards, dugouts, bleachers and scoreboards.

French Field has been around so long that no one seems to know the origin of its name.