Hauler, Caught in Stakeout, Loses Permits for Dumping

Anonymous tips and a stakeout have led to the revocation of dumping permits of a Northridge firm that was caught illegally discharging industrial waste into a sewer, city officials said Monday.

The Los Angeles Board of Public Works on Friday revoked the permits that allowed Pelland Pumping Co. of 11355 Baird Ave. to dump sewage into manholes reserved for use by septic waste haulers.

Police and city and county health inspectors were watching on May 17 when a Pelland driver discharged lead-laden industrial waste into one of those manholes on Peoria Street in Sun Valley.

Pelland’s permits, one for each of the company’s two trucks, allowed only sewage from septic tanks to be dumped into city sewers. In addition, tests showed that the waste Pelland had picked up from a nearby ceramics firm contained much higher concentrations of lead, cadmium and other toxic metals than can legally be discharged without treatment.

To Be Referred to D.A.

Officials with the city Department of Public Works and the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services said Monday that the case will be referred to the Los Angeles city attorney and the district attorney’s office for possible prosecution.

Last week, the county health agency also issued a violation notice to Judy of California Inc., the ceramics firm that produced the waste at its plant at 9350 Glenoaks Blvd., a short distance from the manhole where the material was dumped. Daniel Fresquez, enforcement coordinator for the county health department’s hazardous-waste program, said the notice gave the ceramics company two weeks to correct a series of waste storage and disposal violations.

Both Pelland and Judy of California have said they did not know they were violating waste disposal rules.

The ceramics company, which cooperated with officials by telling them of the scheduled waste pickup on May 17, said it assumed that Pelland was taking the waste to a licensed site. “We were paying to have it dumped, but we didn’t realize that they were dumping around the corner,” said a company official who declined to give her name.

Denies Knowledge of Peril

Randy Singer, who operates Pelland, told the public works board Friday that he had no idea that waste from the ceramics firm, a steady customer, could be considered hazardous. He said he hardly would have used city manholes “on a regular basis” and “in broad daylight” had he known this wasn’t allowed.

Singer could not be reached for comment Monday. His lawyer, Murry Sturner, declined to say whether Singer would go to court or file a new application in an effort to restore the permits. “At this point, I just can’t comment,” Sturner said.

Public works officials said an anonymous tipster told them in January that a Pelland truck had been seen discharging a “white, cake-like substance” into the Peoria Street manhole.

Then in March, they said, another tipster complained that Judy was using the manhole to dispose of its waste.

Wait for Pickup

Mal Toy, a senior sanitary engineer with the Public Works Department, said an inspector then visited the ceramics plant and found out that Pelland was hauling its waste.

Toy said city officials asked to be informed the next time Pelland collected the waste. He said the ceramics firm reported on May 16 that a pickup was scheduled the next day.

According to Toy, a group of city police, city sanitation inspectors and county health inspectors watched the Pelland truck pull up at the plant on the afternoon of May 17. A short time later, other members of the team moved in after the driver began pumping the waste into the manhole.

According to lab tests, the thick substance contained 15,200 milligrams of lead per liter of liquid, a concentration 3,000 times higher than the city limit of 5 milligrams of lead per liter. Public works officials said the ceramics waste also contained about eight times more cadmium, 35 times more zinc and 12 times more copper than permitted.

Environmentalists Critical

The city has come under attack from environmentalists and some scientists because of the elevated amounts of pesticides and other toxic substances found in fish and bottom sediment in Santa Monica Bay near the outfall of the nearly 35-year-old Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant. Most of the waste handled by Hyperion receives only primary treatment, the most limited type. That issue was raised by one member of the public works board shortly before the vote to revoke Pelland’s permits.

The waste from the ceramics firm could legally have been taken to an industrial-waste landfill, even though recent studies and practical experience have shown that all landfills eventually leak.

But Toy said it is better to put such waste in a landfill than in a sewer, which allows the material to be become “a poison for the fish and wildlife out in the ocean.”