Hauler Ordered to Stand Trial in Hazardous-Waste Dumping Case

A Los Angeles Municipal Court judge Thursday ordered a Northridge waste hauler to stand trial on charges that he violated state hazardous-waste laws last May when his company dumped lead-laden industrial waste into a Sun Valley sewer.

After a two-day preliminary hearing, Judge Michael E. Pastor ruled that there was sufficient evidence to order Randy Singer, 27, and Pelland Pumping Co., Singer’s two-truck hauling firm, to stand trial on one misdemeanor count and two felony charges of violating the state Health and Safety Code.

Pastor dismissed eight other misdemeanor charges against Singer and Pelland, who are to scheduled to be arraigned in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Nov. 15.

Ruling ‘Wonderful’

Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph Sorrentino praised Pastor’s ruling as “wonderful in terms of protection of the community.”

Frederic Warner, Singer’s lawyer, said he was disappointed by the ruling but confident that Singer “will be vindicated” at the trial. Of the dumping episode that prompted the charges, Warner said: “There was an error, there was a mistake, but it doesn’t rise to the level of a criminal prosecution.”

On May 17, Los Angeles police and sanitation inspectors staking out a manhole on Peoria Street in Sun Valley caught a Pelland driver in the act of dumping liquid waste from a nearby ceramics firm into the sewer. Pelland had permits to discharge septic waste into the manhole, but not industrial waste.

Laboratory analysis of the waste later revealed high levels of lead and smaller amounts of other toxic metals.

In June, the city’s Board of Public Works stripped Pelland Pumping of its septic dumping permits, but Warner said Thursday that the company had gotten the permits back after paying the city’s investigative costs.

The district attorney’s office filed the two felony and nine misdemeanor charges in August.

Seven of the eight misdemeanor counts dismissed by Pastor related to two incidents last December and November when Pelland drivers allegedly sped away from manholes when approached by inspectors from the city Bureau of Sanitation. No waste samples were gathered at those times and Pastor ruled there was insufficient evidence to support charges of hazardous-waste violations.

The eighth count to be dismissed accused Pelland of transporting hazardous waste without the required state hauling permit. State Department of Health Services records later showed that Pelland did have the permit.

The felony counts on which Pelland and Singer will be tried allege that the company transported and disposed hazardous waste at a site where that was not permitted. The remaining misdemeanor count alleges that Pelland hauled the material without a required hazardous waste manifest, a document identifying waste, its source and its destination.

Denied Knowledge

Each of the felony counts is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. The misdemeanor charge is punishable by up to six months in jail.

During the preliminary hearing, Warner argued that no crime had been committed because Pelland and Singer had not “knowingly” dumped hazardous waste from the ceramics firm, Judy of California Inc., into the sewer.

Under cross-examination by Warner, Paul Gendusa, the owner of the ceramics firm, said he never had analyzed the ceramics waste, and did not know it contained enough lead to be classified as hazardous waste. Nor, said Gendusa, had he ever discussed the nature of the material with Pelland drivers.

Document Not Provided

Gendusa also acknowledged that his company had failed to prepare a hazardous-waste shipping manifest or to provide a copy of the document to Pelland as required by state law. Judy of California has not been charged in the case.

Because “the producer of the hazardous waste . . . never knew what he had in his sump tank,” Warner said outside the courtroom, Pelland Pumping certainly did not know.

Sorrentino said enforcing waste-transportation laws would be impossible if prosecutors in each case had to “elicit from the consciousness” of the hauler proof that he knew the exact nature of the waste.