San Diego
A metals treatment firm that discharged an aluminum solution into Chollas Creek was fined $28,100 Monday and its two executives were ordered to perform 500 hours of volunteer work.
California Creative Dynamics, 411 Raven St., and its former president, Tremaine Gearhart, 55, and vice president, Robert Gloede, 52, pleaded no contest Oct. 11 to discharging the 15,000 gallons of waste into a storm drain that led into the creek.
San Diego Municipal Judge H. Ronald Domnitz told the firm, represented by corporate officer John Stamotopolous, that $18,000 of the fine could be worked off by hiring high school students whose family incomes are less than $20,000 on environmental clean-up projects.
Gloede was fined $10,100, placed on three years’ probation and agreed to volunteer work to help the homeless.
Gearhart was fined $5,100, placed on three years’ probation and will work with the Salvation Army.
Additionally, the firm must pay for ads in the next three issues of Metal Finishing magazine about the six-count felony case filed against them for six dumpings from March 6 to April 3.
A state agency, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, has fined the firm $11,000 in another proceeding.
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