San Diego D.A. Wary of Trash Deals : Landfills: He urges ‘extreme caution’ before contracting with giant Waste Management Inc.

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller warned Wednesday that “extreme caution” should be exercised before San Diego County and cities contract with Waste Management Inc., the nation’s largest trash company.

In a 58-page report requested by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Miller’s staff scolded the company for its purported history of environmental sins, public corruption and attempts to “gain undue influence over government officials.”

The report, 15 months in the making, found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the company’s San Diego County subsidiaries. But it claimed that Waste Management’s methods of lobbying for influence, including a $50,000 donation to the nonprofit Sail San Diego project headed by County Supervisor Brian Bilbray, “suggest an unseemly effort . . . to manipulate local government for its own business ends.”

“If unchecked, these practices, like other more direct forms of improper attempts to gain influence, may have a corrupting impact on local government . . . ,” the report stated.

In Orange County, perhaps only Anaheim-based Taormina Industries hauls more of the county’s trash than do Waste Management’s subsidiaries, according to VerLyn N. (Sonny) Jensen, an attorney who represents Waste Management in Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.

Over the past 15 years, Waste Management and its subsidiaries have contributed $16,610 to candidates for the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The supervisors award waste franchises for unincorporated areas and set the fees for all trash companies dumping at county landfills.

Orange County supervisors last year awarded residential trash franchises valued at more than $4.7 million in annual gross receipts to two Waste Management subsidiaries, Great Western Reclamation and Dewey’s Rubbish Service.

The Waste Management county franchises serve nearly 35,000 residential customers in unincorporated islands around Anaheim, Laguna Beach, Lake Forest, Stanton and Westminster as well as the unincorporated communities of Aegean Hills, Cowan Heights, Laguna Hills, Lemon Heights, Midway City, Modjeska Canyon, North Tustin, Silverado Canyon and Rancho Santa Margarita.

The cities in which Waste Management companies also provide trash hauling are Irvine, Laguna Beach, Lake Forest, Mission Viejo, Santa Ana, Tustin and part of Laguna Hills.

The San Diego report was ordered in December, 1990, when the company was seeking county approval to privately own and operate a landfill in Gregory Canyon in north San Diego County.

San Diego County supervisors later rejected the notion of allowing any company privately own and operate a county landfill, but Waste Management still owns the property in a partnership.

Waste Management did $6 billion in business nationally in 1990. Its other subsidiaries include Waste Management of San Diego, which handles both commercial and multi-residential trash as well as a separate contract with the city to handle curbside recycling for 40,000 customers.

“Despite company assurances to the contrary, local and national environmental groups have expressed concern over the manner in which the plant may be operated and the threat that it poses to the environment,” the report stated.

Waste Management officials at the firm’s home office in Oak Brook, Ill., said Wednesday that the report “provided no new information and was replete with inaccurate statements and half-truths taken out of context.”

J. Steven Bergerson, company vice president and general counsel, described as “particularly malicious and scurrilous” parts of the report that linked organized crime to companies that were later acquired by Waste Management, which does business with 1,500 public agencies around the nation.

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this story.