U.S. Firm Investigated for Arranging Dumping

The federal grand jury in San Diego is investigating the National City firm that arranged for U.S. companies to dispose of hazardous wastes in what turned out to be an illegal dump near the Mexican border town of Tecate, The Times has learned.

Darrel Duisen, chief executive officer of U.S. Technology and Disposal Services, said Wednesday that investigators from the U.S. attorney’s office last week seized “boxes and boxes” of contracts, bank accounts, leases and correspondence from his company’s office.

He said he was questioned extensively Thursday on how his firm had described the Mexican facility to its clients and on whether it had followed federal waste-export requirements. He said he is scheduled to appear before the grand jury again on Friday.

“Everything on every paper on every document on every person we’ve done business with--how, when, why,” Duisen said in an interview Wednesday, when asked the subject of the questioning. “ . . . relationships, tie-ins, people, places.”

Duisen said the grand jury probe is being conducted by Assistant U.S. Atty. Charles S. Crandall, who is in charge of environmental crimes for the office. Crandall on Wednesday said he could not comment on whether the grand jury is investigating the company.

U.S. Technology and Disposal Services was identified last month as the middleman between U.S. companies generating wastes and a Tijuana firm that would dispose of them in Mexico. The dump site has since been closed by Mexican officials, who say it is being cleaned up.

Duisen has consistently defended the arrangement, saying the site had been approved by “well-regarded, respected” engineering firms working in the field of toxic wastes. He declined to identify the firms, but said Wednesday that his firm’s operations were completely aboveboard--a fact he said would be proven in the U.S. attorney’s scrutiny of his records.

“The correspondence . . . and the logs of records and manifests will indicate that, as a matter of record,” Duisen said. “If anybody in the industry made every attempt to complete every requirement, we certainly did.”

Duisen said he believes the grand jury investigation covers the entire hazardous-waste disposal industry--”transporters, generators, marketing.” He said his firm’s customers have been subpoenaed, and he does not believe his company is the sole target. Crandall would not comment on the scope of the investigation.

Nevertheless, Duisen said the raid on his office and the closing of the Tecate site had forced U.S. Technology into a “temporary holding pattern.” He said he had cooperated with the grand jury and testified, rather than invoke his right to silence, on the advice of a lawyer.

Duisen said he resented the implication in the proceeding that he had done anything improper. “I think the way it’s handled, it’s unfair,” Duisen said of the investigation. “ . . . It’s treated internally, in the hearings, as if you were on trial.”

Duisen said the questioning concerned, among other things, his firm’s “representations to clients as to the qualifications of the facility in Mexico” and whether it had handled wastes that require a notification to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Duisen said his company handled no waste defined as hazardous under federal law. Firms exporting such waste must notify the EPA a month in advance. Duisen said the waste was defined as hazardous only under California law, which has a broader definition of hazardous.

The operators of several hazardous-waste generators and transport firms have said in recent interviews that they were led to believe by a representative of U.S. Technology that the Tecate site was fully licensed.

Several said they were told the Tecate facility would accept hazardous wastes in liquid form--an appealing offer at a time when California disposal facilities increasingly refuse liquid wastes and demand costly solidification first.

Ken York, operations manager for a Wilmington, Calif., firm that sent one load of contaminated waste water from an industrial fire to Tecate, said he was told the wastes would be placed in a pond to allow the solids to settle and the liquids to evaporate.

Later, he said, the solids were to be excavated and put in a landfill and the pond reused.

Don Albin, owner of Chemical Rainbow Transport Tank Cleaners in Long Beach, said he was instructed to send samples and chemical profiles of his company’s waste to U.S. Technology to get permission from U.S. and Mexican officials to export it. But Albin said the site was closed before he made any shipments.

Barry Sullenger, general manager of San Diego Environmental Services, a waste hauler, said he never took up U.S. Technology’s offer because the firm could not produce permits proving that the site was legal.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Mexican Secretariat of Urban Development and Ecology said Mexican workers are moving the metal drums, waste oil and other unidentified wastes left in Tecate to a secure dump west of Mexicali. He said the site will be posted with warning signs and the ground water will be tested for contamination. Mexican officials hope to recoup the cleanup cost from Tratamientos Petroquimicos Mexicanos, S.A., the Tijuana firm responsible for the dumping.

The firm, which had contracted with U.S. Technology, is appealing a fine of about $24,000 levied against it by Mexican authorities, contending that it had a right to dump the material in Tecate, the spokesman said. Guillermo Marin, a representative of Tratamientos, has been unavailable for comment.

Duisen said Wednesday that the Tecate site was the only hazardous-waste disposal operation that his firm had worked with. He said he was formerly involved with Inter-Ocean Ltd., which he described as a now-defunct construction company that once attempted unsuccessfully to obtain a building permit for an apartment complex on West Point Loma Boulevard.

Inter-Ocean Ltd. was accused by federal authorities in September, 1978, of illegally placing fill material in Famosa Slough, a marshland near West Point Loma Boulevard that has long been eyed for development. Any filling there must be approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under federal laws protecting waterways.

Public records on file with the Army Corps and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service state that Inter-Ocean signed an agreement in December, 1978, with the California Department of Fish and Game to remove the fill allegedly placed in the wetland. But as late as October, 1980, the fill remained on the site, according to a report by the Fish and Wildlife Service. It could not be determined Wednesday whether it was ever removed, but officials said the property has since changed hands.

Duisen, whose name appears repeatedly in the federal documents, said he was never involved in such an incident.

Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell contributed to this report.