Firm Accused of Illegal Dumping Loses Sewer Service

A Van Nuys metal-plating company that was accused by city officials of illegally dumping cyanide and other hazardous chemicals into city sewers had its sewer line disconnected Friday, and the owner indicated that she will close the firm, city sanitation officials said.

The company, Gaylord Plating Lab Inc., in the 13900 block of Saticoy Street, was raided March 20 by a team of health and sanitation inspectors and law-enforcement officials after earlier tests of its sewage showed high levels of several chemicals, said Donald Norman, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Department of Public Works.

“This was one of the most outrageous incidents we’ve ever had,” said Mal Toy, senior sanitary engineer for the city Bureau of Sanitation. “They made a conscious attempt to get around proper disposal of their waste.”

The decision to disconnect the firm’s sewer line was made Friday morning at a hearing by the Board of Public Works. At the hearing, a lawyer for Barbara Danks, who owns Gaylord Plating, said the company was permanently closing.

Toy said the plant is almost completely disassembled. No company officials would comment.

On March 14, tests of the firm’s sewage showed that concentrations of cadmium, a toxic metal used by the company to plate aircraft parts and other items, were more than 370 times the state-set limit, Toy said.

“That was a Saturday,” he said. “This was a gross dump that was clearly an attempt to bypass our inspectors, who typically show up during weekdays.”

Concentrations of two forms of cyanide--which commonly is used in plating--were dozens of times greater than allowable levels, Toy said.

Gaylord had also been notified in each of the last five months of 1986 that cadmium concentrations were excessive, Toy said.

The March raid turned up even more serious evidence of toxic-waste violations, Toy said. Inspectors discovered that cadmium left over from the plating process and other wastes were being dumped down a drain in the floor of the men’s bathroom.

“The screws holding the drain cover on were still there but they had been cut off so that it could be removed,” he said.

Inspectors also discovered that waste chemicals were poured into a trash bin filled with sawdust, Toy said. On the day of the raid, a truck was about to haul the contaminated sawdust to a landfill that is not authorized to accept hazardous waste, he said.

Because violations were “especially egregious,” the city attorney’s office, which planned the raid, has referred the case to the district attorney for possible felony prosecution under hazardous-waste laws, said Keith W. Pritsker, a deputy city attorney in the environmental-protection unit.