City employees questioned in improper sewage dumping
June Casagrande
NEWPORT BEACH -- One by one, a handful of city staffers are being
called to the Costa Mesa offices of Rutan & Tucker LLP, whose attorneys
are trying to find out who, if anyone, knew that the city was dumping
waste improperly.
City officials will not disclose which employees are to be questioned,
in part because that’s for the attorneys to decide. The firm is
responsible for determining the scope and approach of their investigation
into a city practice of sending sewer trailing -- sand, eggshells and raw
human waste -- to the Frank R. Bowerman Landfill in Irvine. For 12 years,
the city has mixed sewer trailing with storm drain debris in a receptacle
called a dewatering basin before sending the contents to the landfill.
“The fundamental question is: When this dewatering basin was built,
did the people who built it know that these two piles of stuff -- the
sewer wet well trailings and the storm drain trailings -- shouldn’t be
combined?” Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff said.
The employees being questioned are from the General Services and
Utilities departments. The General Services Department oversees matters
such as waste disposal, but Utilities Department workers also could have
information helpful to the investigation. General Services Department
Director David Niederhaus was in his current post in 1990, when the basin
was built.
Mayor Tod Ridgeway said it’s possible that no one knew the city was
doing anything wrong.
“You’ve got to recognize that the complaint is that we sent a very,
very small amount of fecal material to a land dump,” Ridgeway said,
asserting that it’s minor in comparison with the practice, common in
some cities, of throwing diapers in the garbage. “We take full
responsibility for what happened, even if we weren’t aware of it. The
only unanswered question now is: Did anybody know? And we’re
investigating that.”
If someone did know, it has not yet been determined what, if any,
actions might be taken, Kiff said. Officials are unable to estimate when
the investigation might be complete.
* June Casagrande covers Newport Beach. She may be reached at (949)
574-4232 or by e-mail at o7 june.casagrande@latimes.comf7 .
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