Regulations Make Disposing of Old Oil a Slippery Task

Dear Street Smart:

Where are San Clemente residents supposed to get rid of their old engine oil? I’ve called service stations, but they say the county or state has made it too hard to take used oil anymore. A recording by the Orange County Fire Department states that the closest recycling place is a Chevron station in Irvine that charges $1.

Something’s not right here. From South San Clemente, that involves a one-hour round trip to pay someone to take old oil! I know it’s illegal to dump it, but with a setup this inconvenient, I doubt that even a fraction of the motor oil sold in this city ever makes it to a recycling center. San Clemente’s underground oil deposits could be growing substantially! Meanwhile, I’m running out of containers for my old oil! It would be strange indeed if regulations designed to force used oil to be safely processed resulted in even more of it being dumped into the environment.

Garr Updegraff, San Clemente

Have faith. The future looks brighter for all you oil-soaked souls trying to do the right thing. By mid-summer, a new county household hazardous materials collection center should open in San Juan Capistrano, eager to receive your oil and other toxic materials free of charge.

Currently, the county has two centers open to collect such waste, in Anaheim and Huntington Beach. Both are less than a year old and have taken in about 27,000 oil changes between July, 1990, and March, 1991, if you figure 5 quarts of oil per change. A fourth location, in the Tustin-Irvine area, is being considered.

These centers will come as a relief to do-it-yourselfers who are finding service stations no longer happy to take in motley containers full of used oil. Once upon a time, recyclers would pay service stations for their oil. However, those days are long gone, said Jaimy Gentry, who coordinates the Orange County Fire Department’s hazardous materials program. Now, tighter regulations make it more expensive to get rid of oil and other hazardous wastes.

But a pilot program might erase the frowns of service station owners. Chevron and the county have designated stations in Fullerton, Irvine, Newport Beach, Orange and Tustin where residents can drop off up to 5 gallons of oil at a buck a visit.

Until summer, however, South County will remain without a convenient oil collection location, it seems. If you can’t hang in there until then and don’t want to make the drive, Gentry suggests letting your fingers do the walking through the phone book, calling service stations in your area to see if one might be receptive to taking your oil.

For information about hours and locations of the county’s collection centers and pilot-program service stations, phone the hazardous materials hot line at (714) 744-0516. There is also a state recycling hot line that has a list of collection centers. The number is (800) 553- 2962.

Dear Street Smart:

When entering the Rancho Santa Margarita area via eastbound Santa Margarita Parkway, many cars turn right at Avenida Empresa to go to work, their homes or the Tijeras Creek Golf Course. My question is when to enter the right-turn lane in order to make the turn at Empresa, as there are two prior “minor” turnoffs for small business/residential developments. There is a solid white line for most of the three-block-long section, with occasional breaks at the intersections. Each car seems to enter the right-turn lane at a different point, causing confusion and potential danger.

Bob Hayden, Rancho Santa Margarita

Your confusion stems from the county’s desire to make it less confusing out there. That long right-turn lane will eventually become the on-ramp lane to the proposed Foothill tollway. Obviously, the toll road isn’t there yet, but all the space on the surface street is. So the county striped it as a right-turn lane to make use of it in the meantime. “We wouldn’t stripe a right-turn lane that long, but we had to do something with the pavement,” county traffic engineer Ignacio Ochoa explained.

The lane is broken before each of the driveways it passes, Ochoa said, and you shouldn’t enter it until just before you are ready to turn. So if you want to turn onto Avenida Empresa, don’t move into the lane until you’ve passed the preceding driveways. Otherwise, you’ll be blocked by vehicles slowing to turn.

Ochoa added that a large number of vehicles make right turns into the businesses in that area, so the long turn lane helps keep them out of the way of through traffic.

Dear Street Smart:

Who is responsible for keeping vehicles from taking a shortcut around Coast Highway in Laguna Beach by going through the bus terminal to or from Broadway and Ocean Avenue? I have witnessed a near head-on collision between a bus and a motorist taking a shortcut. There are four posted signs stating “Buses Only,” “Do Not Enter,” etc. I wonder who is responsible for enforcing this--the bus company or the Laguna Beach Police Department? I’m aware that the police cannot permanently station an officer there. However, with tourist season upon us, this is an accident waiting to happen.

Sylvia M. Maresca, Laguna Beach

Yes, when the traffic grows bad, people are more inclined to do stupid or unsafe things such as taking illegal shortcuts. Sgt. Greg Bartz of the Laguna Beach Police Department agreed that some frustrated commuters in the area may view the bus terminal as a traffic-jam bypass.

“I imagine that when traffic gets heavy, cars do go through there,” he said.

Police issue citations to motorists who violate the buses-only regulation but only when they see them. The department has not found cars passing through the terminal to be a major problem, Bartz said.

The city’s director of municipal services, Terry Brandt, agreed that it isn’t a common problem, but he promised to look into the situation and take action to correct it, either with larger signs or some other solution.

The best answer, of course, is for people to take it a little slower--and safer--when the brake lights start flashing on vehicles in front of them. Signs may help, but it’s really a problem of attitude, as Bartz noted.

“Honestly,” he said, “I think you can put every sign in the world up, and people are going to ignore them if they’re trying to get someplace.”

Dear Street Smart:

I was most interested to learn from your column about David Rizzo’s “Freeway Alternatives: A Guide to Commuting in Los Angeles and Orange Counties.” How does one go about obtaining a copy?

Sheila O’Brien, Laguna Hills

Good question--and one raised by another reader too. The book by David Rizzo, a.k.a. Dr. Roadmap, can be found in several bookstores, including Waldenbooks and B. Dalton. For those who missed last week’s column, Rizzo’s book has more than 100 pages of maps, with information on getting from point A to point B in the Southland without using a freeway. It lists for $10.95.