For Kazarian, Landfill Was Learning Ground

Kenneth Benjamin Kazarian studied business at three different schools but never graduated from college. Academics did not really interest him. He learned more about business at his family’s garbage dump than he ever learned in school.

Kazarian’s college career ended when he was 21, on the day he was scheduled to take his final exams. The man who was supposed to fill in for him at the dump called in and quit minutes before his shift was to start, and “I had no choice but to stay there and miss my final,” Kazarian said. “And I never went back.”

It is a decision the 37-year-old president of BKK Corp. seldom regrets, even though, in the last two years, the BKK landfill in West Covina has been embroiled in an emotional controversy over leaking toxic waste.

“I was never a big fan of school,” he said. “I just grew up thinking that when I get old enough, I’ll just go into business with my dad. It was something I enjoyed. I was never forced to do that.”

Adversaries Respect Him

Burly and affable, Kazarian is often charming in a down-to-earth way. A highly visible figure in a visceral business, he is surprisingly well respected by many adversaries.

“My impression is that he is a person who is dedicated to solving the waste problem,” said Forest Tennant, a West Covina city councilman and former mayor, who has often found himself on the opposite side of the fence from Kazarian. “He has studied very hard and appears to be knowledgeable. He’s accessible, you can get hold of him, and he’s easy to talk to.”

Tennant has been dealing with Kazarian and the problems of the BKK landfill for most of the 10 years he has served on the West Covina City Council. What to do about the dump, which once was one of the largest hazardous-waste landfills in the state, has been a question that Tennant and his fellow council members have struggled with for years.

“Nobody wants it. Nobody wants it here. Everyone would like it dug up and moved away,” Tennant said. “And that’s never going to happen. I think that if I was Kazarian, I would have closed up, packed my bags and ran a long time ago. Money is not worth it when you’re involved in that kind of controversy.”

Family Firm Since 1963

The BKK landfill has been run by Kazarian’s family since 1963. His grandfather handed the presidency to his father, and his father to him. The board of directors of BKK Corp. consists of Kazarian, his three younger brothers, and his father, Benjamin K. Kazarian Jr., who is chairman.

Over the years, the family has fended off complaints from residents, feuded with the city of West Covina, taken on the regulatory agencies, and heavily contributed to political figures on almost every governmental level to protect its interests at the landfill.

Besides the dump, BKK Corp. also owns a trash transfer station in Torrance, a hazardous-waste trucking division called Falcon Disposal, a toxic-waste treatment facility in San Diego that now operates as a transfer station for hazardous household waste, and property in Wilmington that is the proposed site for a waste treatment facility.

Kazarian was made president of the corporation in 1984 when his father stepped down. His three brothers help administer the landfill and run the corporation’s other entities. Kazarian spends most of his time running the landfill.

“It consumes more of my time than anything else,” he said. On a typical day, he may spend half of his time at the corporation’s headquarters in Torrance, and the rest at the landfill.

Time-Consuming Job

But often, Kazarian said, he does not know where he is supposed to be from one day to the next. “It’s really sporadic. I’m a creature of my calendar,” he said.

“The landfill is a very important part of the corporation because we are a waste management firm. Administration-wise, it probably consumes most of our time.”

When he is not running the family business, Kazarian loves to race cars. It is a passionate hobby. When he was younger, before he married at age 21, he used to drag race. “All of that kind of quit when I got married,” he said, laughing.

For the past five years, Kazarian has been racing in off-road contests. In 1984, he won the first indoor off-road race at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis.

“He’s got a natural ability,” said Mickey Thompson, a promoter and off-road racer whose championship races are held all over the country. “I’ve known Kenny for 25 years. He’s a very smart driver. He drives extremely hard, but he’s extremely smart. Whatever it takes to win, he’ll do it.”

Armenian Immigrant

Kazarian’s grandfather, Benjamin K. Kazarian Sr., was 10 years old when he came to this country from Armenia in 1910, following in the footsteps of Kazarian’s great-grandfather, who had come to the United States with his family in search of religious freedom.

The family settled in Los Angeles. The sons eventually went into the trucking business, hauling manure. From there, Kazarian’s grandfather took over the lease on a dump where trash was taken for burning.

“It was a tough business. He didn’t take any baloney from anyone,” Kazarian said of his grandfather. He stayed in that business for a while, accumulating more burning dumps until the early 1950s, when they were outlawed.

Despite its ethnic background, the family has “never been real tight with the Armenian community,” Kazarian said.

“My grandfather married a Canadian, so he was kind of looked down upon because he married an o-dar (Armenian for outsider). We’re not really looked upon in the Armenian community as real Armenians,” Kazarian said. “My father is 50% and I’m only 25% Armenian.”

But, he added, “we don’t forget where our roots come from.”

Licensed for Toxics

In 1963, grandfather Kazarian took over the lease for what is now the BKK landfill from Home Savings & Loan Assn. He operated it until 1972, when he went into semi-retirement and his son, Benjamin Jr., became president of BKK.

From 1968, when it was licensed to receive hazardous waste, until 1984, the dump received more than 3 million tons of toxic substances, including vinyl chloride, benzene, cyanide and various types of acids.

In 1978, BKK Corp. bought the landfill property, as well as parcels adjacent to it. The company now owns about 1,200 acres, including the 583-acre dump site in West Covina as well as a parcel in neighboring Walnut.

That same year, Kazarian’s grandfather died.

“I really had two fathers,” Kazarian said. “My dad and my grandfather really taught me the business. And my grandfather taught me how to drive. He was a great man.”

Sons’ Careers Undecided

Kazarian and his wife, Denise, live with their two sons, Zachary, 14, and Matthew, 12, in Rolling Hills Estates.

Kazarian said he is not sure if his sons will carry on the family tradition of operating the landfill.

“My oldest boy worked last summer at our transfer station,” Kazarian said. “But this business is changing so fast I don’t know what we’ll be doing when he gets old enough.

“My youngest boy is thinking about being a lawyer, and that would be pretty terrific because we sure use enough lawyers.”

In 1984, when Kazarian assumed the presidency of the corporation, the landfill thrust the family into its most bitter public battle. That specter still haunts the company.

That July, 21 families were evacuated from their homes near the dump because potentially explosive levels of methane gas invaded their quiet neighborhood. The gas was carrying with it vinyl chloride, a carcinogen.

In the months that followed, Kazarian, acting as spokesman for BKK, found himself in a very difficult position.

Media Spotlight

On one hand, he had 21 distraught families who feared for their lives and the safety of their homes. On the other, he had myriad regulatory agencies giving orders on how to rectify the situation and efforts by the city of West Covina to shut down the landfill. And all of it was being played out under a nationwide news media spotlight.

It is one of the few times that Kazarian has publicly lost his temper.

“I’m just frustrated,” he said in an interview at the time. “I’m going crazy. We’re the ones that all this anger and emotion is centered around. Lately, with all this publicity, I’ve got all these reporters coming up to me and trying to win Pulitzers. But all they do is write stuff that belongs in the National Enquirer.”

Bowing to the pressure, BKK, the only toxic-waste dump operating in Southern California at the time, voluntarily stopped receiving hazardous materials in November, 1984. It continues to accept household trash, however.

Under a court-ordered clean-up, gas migration diminished and the last of the evacuated families was allowed to return to its home in January, 1985. Since then, the controversy has died down, but the evacuation is never far from the surface in any discussion of the landfill.

Evacuation Recalled

“It will be two years ago this month,” said Ruth Dennis, who together with her son, mother and brother, were evacuated from their Leanna Drive home. “That was a very bad experience for us.”

She and her family moved to a new house in Walnut in October.

“In order to keep your sanity, you have to walk away from it, or it will eat you alive,” Dennis said. “It’s not just BKK’s fault. It’s the city’s fault, the government and state’s fault. It was just one big circle. I called Mr. Kazarian myself (during the evacuation). He was very sympathetic. He wanted to do the right thing, it seemed to me.”

But not everyone pictures Kazarian in such a favorable light.

There are those who believe that he is poisoning the land and the people around the landfill. More than 400 nearby residents, including Dennis, have sued BKK Corp. for damages in excess of $100 million, claiming that their health and the property values of their homes have suffered because of noxious fumes escaping from the dump.

Families Fear for Cancer

And at various times over the 23 years the landfill has been open, homeowners have begged pleaded and screamed in frustration, trying to convince city, state and federal officials that Kazarian’s dump is a deadly graveyard of toxic chemicals that will manifest itself as cancer in their bodies or those of their children.

Kazarian says he considers such claims hysterical and somewhat insulting.

“There is a giant lack of perspective when it comes to toxic chemicals,” Kazarian said. “It’s been real difficult for us to address. I just really don’t know how to deal with it, except to deal with it as we have been. Over the years, we’ve just relied on the experts to come in and take a look at it.”

And the experts, Kazarian said, in at least six different studies done by the University of Southern California and various regulatory agencies, have concluded that any risk from living next to the landfill is minimal.

Attorney’s Viewpoint

But to Herb Hafif, the attorney representing the residents, Kazarian’s words are self-serving.

“If you take what he says at face value, you’d think he was a humanitarian,” Hafif said. “There’s a possibility that he’s rationalized himself into thinking that he’s somehow doing the right thing for this community.

“The guys that made DDT fought long and hard to keep it on the market, claiming that we needed it to protect the crops. In this case, a jury is going to judge him and his actions and the effects of what they’ve done.”

But to Councilman Tennant, the lawsuits are a divisive influence on the community, and have prolonged the dispute between BKK and nearby homeowners.

“If we didn’t have the lawsuits, I think the community could come together,” Tennant said. “How can I, as a city councilman, take recommendations from those residents when they stand to get money from the lawsuits?”

Phase-Out Scheduled

Last year, BKK and the city reached an agreement to phase out the landfill over the next decade. The parties are negotiating now over what kind of development to erect on the landfill site when it is closed.

The agreement marked the beginning of a period of downright friendliness between the city and BKK, something lacking in previous years, when dealings between the two were often acrimonious.

“I think it’s getting better,” Kazarian said. “I do think there’s light at the end of the tunnel. And this time I don’t think it’s a freight train.”