Junkyard Owner Vows He’ll Fight to Stay in Business : Pollution: Anaheim’s Adams family plans lawsuit in effort to block city’s plans to close down salvage operations that officials say endanger ground water.

ANAHEIM — The owners of an Anaheim junkyard and recycling center, accused of creating potential ground-water pollution, said Wednesday that they will file suit to stop the city’s plan to close them down.

George Adams Jr., who with his family owns Adams International Metal Recycling, Pull Your Part Auto Salvage and other related businesses on a 15-acre site next to the Riverside Freeway and above one of North County’s main ground-water basins, said the family will fight for its business rather than allow the revocation of their city operating permits.

The City Council on Tuesday refused to review its decision of last month to revoke the family’s permits, and city officials said they will probably take steps to close the facility within days. Adams said he will go to court to seek an injunction against the city if officials take such action.

In a two-hour interview Wednesday at the salvage yard office, Adams said city officials want to close the salvage yard so they can build a hotel on the site.

“I’m going to beat the city in court and then they’ll never get us out of here,” Adams, an attorney, said. “I’m tired of being pushed around, harassed and stepped upon by the city.”

Adams accused city officials of taking the “extreme” step of renting a top-floor room at an adjacent hotel and flying helicopters over his yard to spy on his operation.

“The city doesn’t want to see wrecking yards in this city, they want to see hotels,” Adams said. “And they are going to do everything in their power to try to get this place, and I’m going to do everything to stop them.”

Assistant City Atty. Selma Mann, who has handled the city’s case against the family, called Adams’ accusations of a fixed mediation hearing and a secret plan to build a hotel on the property “absurd.”

“George has created his own problems, and now he wants to shift the blame to everyone else,” she said.

Richard D. La Rochelle, a supervising code enforcement officer, said the hotel room wasn’t rented, but confirmed that the department has taken pictures of the yard from the hotel and from helicopters. He declined to comment further, saying the investigation is ongoing.

The Adamses and various government agencies have been fighting for years, primarily over a 15,000-ton pile of shredded metal and foam from automobiles and appliances that is sitting directly over--and, authorities say, is polluting--the ground-water basin. Local water officials have said they have detected no pollution in the basin, but add that chemicals introduced into the ground often take years before they seep into the water system.

The city has also cited the Adamses for 14 other alleged code violations ranging from fire hazards to inadequate landscaping. Adams said these citations are “petty” and just part of the effort to close him down, while city officials said they show that the Adamses have an attitude of “indifference” to city ordinances.

But the main problem, both sides agree, is the pile of shredder materials. Accumulated between 1984 and 1986 during a period when the state temporarily banned the shipping of certain materials to common landfills, the pile contains high levels of PCBs--an agent found in old appliances that is believed to cause cancer--lead, cadmium, nickel and other heavy metals, according to reports.

Adams said other shredder operators accumulated piles during this period, but they were able to resume shipping because they did not have high levels of PCBs in their waste because they did not shred as many appliances as he did. PCB-contaminated waste must be taken to special landfills, which would have cost $16 million and would have broken the company, he said.

“But if I didn’t shred the appliances, where would they have gone? The landfill,” Adams said. And once there, the PCBs would have eventually leaked from the intact appliances anyway, he said. “I’m being made a criminal for something I had nothing to do with,” he said.

Adams said that he has told city officials that efforts to move the pile could begin within a month--he said the recession has dropped the landfill’s price to $5 million--but that their goal is to put him out of business and they don’t want to listen.

But city officials said that Adams has been promising to move the pile for six years and that they don’t believe his promises anymore.

“If this was the first time he had come before the council for an extension, we would have granted it,” Councilman Tom Daly said. “But he has been coming to us since 1986.”