Rita Lavelle, Frightened, Starts Serving Prison Term

A frightened Rita Lavelle, former head of the EPA’s toxic waste cleanup program, surrendered today to federal prison officials to begin serving a six-month sentence for lying to Congress.

Lavelle, accompanied by relatives, arrived at the minimum security Federal Correctional Institution shortly after 11 a.m. and told reporters she was “scared” but that she wanted to “get it over with.”

She insisted that she was framed and blamed “people in the Justice Department and people in the White House.”

She was then ushered into the campus-like prison, where newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst once served a 22-month sentence, and began her processing.

Lavelle, who was fired from her Environmental Protection Agency post two years ago, was sentenced in December, 1983, and fined $10,000 in connection with testimony on when she learned her former employer, Aerojet General Corp. of Sacramento, was one of hundreds of companies dumping toxic waste at the Stringfellow Acid Pits near Riverside.

Lavelle, the only high-level Reagan Administration official sentenced to prison for a felony relating to official duties, contended she was made a “scapegoat” for the controversy that swept the EPA in 1983. She has been working on a book on her experiences in the agency.

Of the 22 EPA officials, including former Administrator Anne Burford, who resigned as a result of the controversy over mismanagement and sweetheart deals with industry, Lavelle was the only one indicted.