OCEANSIDE: Shuttered park may be resurrected in 2011

April 22, 2009

North County Times

OCEANSIDE -- A contaminated Little League park in east Oceanside could reopen in 2011, thanks, in part, to a grant from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, city officials said Wednesday.

The reopening will take longer than officials with Vista American Little League had hoped, but after years of waiting for the field to reopen, any progress is welcome, President John Aguilera said. French Field is the league's home turf.

"It's definitely good news," he said about the grant.

The city closed French Field in 2005 to study whether the remnants of a long-defunct county dump had fouled the soil.

Testing revealed 58 chemicals, including arsenic and lead, at or near the park. A 2008 report said the cancer risk from long-term exposure wasn't negligible, but was at a level considered acceptable by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Oceanside has drafted a cleanup plan that is awaiting approval from the state. The plan includes covering the baseball diamonds with fresh soil, paving the parking lot and covering the nearby banks of Loma Alta Creek with concrete.

All of that will cost about $1.46 million, said William Snyder, an attorney handling the project for Oceanside. Rebuilding the fields will cost more, but how much is still unclear.

Some of the money will come from a $730,000 matching grant awarded by the state waste management board in February. Insurance companies for Oceanside, Vista and San Diego County will decide in court how to divvy up the rest, Snyder said.

All three agencies are involved because, decades ago, the Vista Sanitary District owned the property and leased it to the county for trash disposal. The land, in an industrial area near Oceanside Boulevard and North Melrose Drive, is within Oceanside's borders.

Vista American Little League has played in both Vista and Oceanside since it lost French Field. John Landes Park has been its home base in recent years.

The evaluation of the health risks at French Field was conservative in that its assessments assumed someone lived on site for 30 years.