Wastes Remain at Southeast S.D. Site : Firm Fined $50,000 More in Dumping Case

A metals-treatment firm in a residential area of Southeast San Diego that was convicted in 1985 of dumping caustic chemical wastes into a storm drain was fined $50,000 Wednesday for violating its probation.

The action against California Creative Dynamics came just one week after environmental and health officials made an emergency visit to the site to shore up half a dozen large tanks containing 120,000 gallons of chemicals and wastes.

“The materials are not anything that anyone wants to come into contact with, and certainly not something that we want in the storm drain,” said Larry Aker, chief of the hazardous materials management unit for San Diego County.

Aker described the bulk of the chemicals as “the same thing as Drano.” He said that last week his team found one tank leaking and several filled to within inches of their tops, which were open at a time when forecasters were predicting rain.

Aker said his office is negotiating with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to get money for immediate removal of the wastes “to avoid a future, more costly environmental hazard at the site.” The Raven Street site lies 50 yards from a row of houses.

On Wednesday, Municipal Court Judge Ronald Domnitz revoked the company’s probation and fined it $50,000 after concluding that it had violated the state health and safety code. The violation consisted of allowing a caustic mist to waft off the property in July.

Domnitz did not rule on half a dozen other probation violations alleged by the San Diego County district attorney’s office. Those included allegedly failing to employ much of the youth labor prescribed by the court, and overstating the pay given to those who were hired.

Domnitz also postponed a decision on Deputy Dist. Atty. Josephine Kiernan’s request that he tighten the terms of the probation of one of the company’s principals, Robert Gloede. After Gloede agreed to help with the cleanup, Domnitz continued the case until March 31.

Afterward, attorneys said it is unlikely that the firm will pay the fine or the cost of removing the chemicals and wastes. California Creative Dynamics, which had been the subject of City Council hearings, declared bankruptcy last month and has ceased operations.

“The bottom line here is somebody’s going to have to be financially responsible for removing the waste,” said Kenneth Noel, Gloede’s lawyer. “Mr. Gloede is perfectly willing to do what he can. What he can’t do is to pay the money because he doesn’t have any money.”

California Creative Dynamics, at 411 Raven St., was charged in 1985 with dumping sodium hydroxide into a drain that fed into Chollas Creek. Environmental officials said the March and April, 1985, discharges killed plant and animal life in a three-mile stretch of the creek.

Gloede and another principal, Tremaine Gearhart, pleaded no contest to the felony charges of hazardous-waste dumping and were fined and ordered to perform 500 hours of community service. The company also pleaded no contest and was fined $28,100.

Under the 1985 sentence, the company could offset $18,000 of that fine by hiring high school students from low-income families.

On Wednesday, Kiernan said the firm had made no payments on the $10,000 cash portion of its fine. She said it had also hired too few students, counting their salaries at more than $12 an hour while paying them $3.75.

Last July, the county’s Air Pollution Control District found that the company had created a public nuisance by allowing caustic soda mist off its property. Al Danzig, chief of enforcement, said Wednesday that the agency had fined the company $1,000.

Danzig said the violation came after seven other notices of violation that had been issued between March and December, 1985. Those violations involved air pollution because the firm did not have the proper pollution-control devices.

Finally, the Regional Water Quality Control Board in September, 1985, fined the company nearly $12,000 for the Chollas Creek dumping. The firm failed to pay about half that fine. The state attorney general’s office is now handling the case.

On Wednesday, attorney Noel characterized Gloede, 63, as a “good Samaritan” who has stayed on without pay to try to resolve the problem of the wastes. He said Gloede is trying to develop a process to neutralize the wastes so that they may be dumped at reduced expense.

Noel opposed Kiernan’s request that Domnitz amend Gloede’s probation to make him legally responsible for the proper disposition of the wastes. Noel said that would be unreasonable because Gloede has no money.

Noel assured Domnitz that Gloede would “continue to be a good Samaritan doing what he can do to assist the federal, state and local agencies to clean up the waste.”

George Hunt, an attorney for the firm, said in an interview later that he acknowledged the air pollution violation to avoid a long hearing on Kiernan’s other charges. But he said the firm claims to have hired more low-income workers but many did not show up for work.

As for their pay, Hunt said the firm contends that the $12 figure represented the “manufacturer’s burden to operate.” That includes insurance, worker’s compensation and other operating expenses involved in hiring the workers.

Aker said his agency took it upon itself to secure the site last week after Gloede assured him he had no money to do it. Aker said county, state and federal officials and an environmental cleanup contractor worked there from Wednesday through Saturday.

He said the materials there include aluminium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide, both caustics used for dipping metal parts. He said there was also an acid tank containing nitric acid and hydrofluoric acid, and rinse tanks containing sludges.

He estimated the cost of the cleanup so far to be less than $10,000.

The company was formed in 1984, lawyers said. Asked whether the firm had ever disposed properly of any waste, Aker said: “It appears that almost all the waste had simply been accumulating on the site.”