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Tests to reckon whether the people of Casmalia are endangered have proved inconclusive. In 1984 a county consultant found some chemical pollutants in water from Casmalia's town well, and concentrations of arsenic and lead were detected in a sample of private well water taken in town last spring. Traces of benzene, 1,4-dioxane and other chemicals were found in air samples taken around Casmalia last December, but all were at levels below those the EPA considers dangerous.
Nonetheless, people in Casmalia say they feel unwell. Many children seem to have developed bronchitis. McCalip discovered he had high blood pressure late last fall, as did the Vaniters. "I just been so dizzy," says Phyllis. "And our chests hurt." Paulette Postiff has kidney disease, she and her son get sore throats, and her husband has headaches and eye irritation. "Everybody in Casmalia has a runny nose," says Ruthanne Tompkins. "Dave and I are not very health conscious, but if my husband gets cancer because somebody was nasty . . ." The talk almost always turns to carcinomas. "You may not see a growth right now," says Smith. "It's the long run that worries me."
"I didn't tell you all the deaths, did I?" asks McCalip late one day. "In the past six years," he says, "there have been four or five lung- cancer deaths in Casmalia. The young woman who used to teach here with me was ! in perfect health when she came, and she died of leukemia two years later." Not until last month, after well-to-do neighborhoods in Santa Maria got a strong chemical whiff one day, did the county government finally admit the dump was a problem. People in Casmalia are sure they have the official reluctance figured: revenues from the dump this year will be $40 million, with the county taking 10% off the top. "Money talks," says Phyllis Vaniter.
But even the rich family in Casmalia shares the concerns. Dave Tompkins came to ranch in 1937, after college, and he now has many hundreds of cattle, many hundreds of acres, and oil leases. Mature olive trees and enormous pink roses line the front yard of his splendid hacienda. "Something's wrong," says his wife. Dave nods. "There is something funny going on," he says.
He does not mind so much if property values get depressed. "We intend to live here until we die," Tompkins says. "But the poor people in town, all they have are their homes." Rather, his fear is that waste chemicals might percolate through the ground into his cattle's drinking water. "If that stuff ever gets into the water, we're through." As for the odor, it burns his sinuses and gives him headaches. "If you see a lot of trucks come in," says Tompkins, who lives close to the dump entrance, "you can pretty well bet there'll be a smell by the end of the day."
Casmalia Resources is open 24 hours, and every day about a hundred trucks roll in and out. The vast site could be on Mars. Hills and canyons are denuded. The great dirt expanses where steel drums are buried dwarf the bulldozers and moon-suited workers. Dozens of deep pools of dark, still liquids, interconnected by a web of white pipes running uphill and down, pock the landscape. Oily sludge is stirred into the ground. A tanker truck squirts full blast into a waste pond. With its tidy system of interlacing roads and sharply etched contours, the dump is as neat as a map and profoundly ugly.