Toxic Cops Are on the Trail of Polluting Firms

‘It’s like speeding. You can speed, but you’re . . . going to get caught.’

It was 4:30 a.m. when two figures stepped into the moonlight, walked to the middle of the street and began to pry the metal cover off a manhole with a pickax.

They stopped a moment, looking around to see if anyone in the low-rise industrial buildings along Mariner’s Way in Garden Grove was watching. When there was no movement from the darkened buildings, they returned to work.

Resting in sewer water at the bottom of the manhole was the object of their interest: a fat, black canister with a label that warned: “Do not tamper with or remove.”

They hauled up the container by a rope and snapped it open. Nestled inside were 24 white, plastic bottles filled with liquid, one for each hour of the day. In most of the bottles, the liquid was clear. But in one bottle, the fluid was milky white and, slowly settling to the bottom, was a half-inch layer of turquoise flakes.

Industrial waste inspector Mike McCarthy held the milky flask up to a flashlight. “They lost some more stuff last night,” he said.

Possibly Discharged Illegally

The “stuff” was copper, possibly discharged illegally from a nearby manufacturing plant.

And McCarthy and his partner, Mary Sue Thompson, were both inspectors--or “toxic cops” as they are sometimes known--for the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County. Industrial espionage and a get-tough stance against industrial polluters represent a sharp turnaround for the once-complacent sanitation agency based in Fountain Valley.

The 33-year-old agency, which owns more than 800 miles of sewer trunk line, still would rather persuade a company to comply with its regulations than levy fines or take it to court, inspectors say. But recently it has placed a new and strong emphasis on enforcement.

Two weeks after Thompson and McCarthy’s pre-dawn inspection, the districts’ lab tests showed that a small circuit board manufacturer called Alphanetics Inc., had committed “major discharge violations.” The company’s permit limited its discharge to 0.45 pounds of copper per day. But, according to samples taken from Alphanetics’ sewer line, the plant was actually dumping up to 14.85 pounds a day.

In a formal cease-and-desist notice, the districts’ industrial waste division chief, Richard von Langen, threatened to assess $4,040 in noncompliance fees and another $36,000 in civil penalties.

Initially, Alphanetics’ President Paco Lopez denied the charges. But after meeting with Von Langen and other agency officials, he agreed to comply and to add new waste treatment systems to his plant. For now, agency officials are still considering whether the civil penalties are necessary and they are monitoring Alphanetics closely.

For years, the common perception among the public and sanitation engineers was that dumping paints, pesticides, carcinogenic metals and just about anything into the sewer was acceptable, says Blake Anderson, the districts’ director of operations.

Amid Growing Concerns

“No one really thought about what happens when you depress the chrome handle” of the toilet, Anderson said.

But amid growing concerns about the impact of toxic and carcinogenic metals on both marine life and humans, the 1972 federal Clean Water Act set the first limits on dumping pollutants into rivers and oceans. In addition, as firms began to relocate to Orange County in the late 1960s and early l970s, agency officials realized they needed to limit industrial waste, Anderson says.

Starting in 1976, the districts set precise limits on the number of pounds of pollutants a firm could discharge and began monitoring those discharges. Initially, compliance was voluntary; there were no fines. But as inspectors have repeatedly caught small or sometimes just “stubborn companies” trying to get around the rules, the districts’ attitudes have changed, Anderson says.

“We’ve become much more enforcement-oriented,” he said. In 1980, the agency, which represents nine sanitation districts in Orange County, had only four industrial waste inspectors. Now there are 13. And last year, the agency published a list of the county’s 24 significant violators. In addition, the districts assessed $146,402 in non-compliance fees.

Already, officials say they can measure the impact of their recent regulations. In 1976-77, Orange County firms discharged 92 pounds per day of cadmium into the sewers; by 1985-86 it was only 32 pounds per day. Similarly, copper discharges of 890 pounds per day in 1976-77 fell to 597 pounds in 1985-86.

Bolted Line Shut

Also, for the first time, the agency last year began taking violators to court. Civil charges were filed against three firms and misdemeanor charges were filed against Vinod S. Shah and Narendra Shah, owners of a Brea metal plating firm that allegedly dumped cadmium, chromium and copper down the sewer.

And, in an action even agency officials concede was extreme, inspectors last Nov. 5 visited the Shahs’ firm, S & B Plating, and bolted their sewer line shut with a metal plate. The Shahs claim the agency has harassed them.

However, Ed Woolsey, president of the Industrial Environmental Coalition of Orange County, says he believes district inspectors are tough but fair.

“They have to be tough because of the regulations that they are trying to adhere to . . . therefore, they have to pass on to industry some very stringent controls,” Woolsey said.

Meeting agency requirements often can be very costly. Companies have paid from $2,000 to several million dollars to install complex waste treatment systems, usually required to meet the agency’s discharge limits.

When the regulations were imposed, many mom-and-pop firms “either complied or were forced out of business,” Woolsey says. His own firm, Cherry Textron, a Santa Ana fastener supplier for the airline industry, spent more than $2 million on its pretreatment system.

Has Little Sympathy

But the transitional era is over; now companies are expected to use pretreatment systems or face penalties, agency officials say. And Woolsey, for one, has little sympathy with companies that violate their discharge permits.

“It’s like speeding. You can speed but you’re eventually going to get caught,” he said. “You’re just playing your chances. And I don’t condone that for anyone.”

Inspectors like Mike McCarthy say they have had plenty of experience with violators.

McCarthy, for instance, recalls visiting an electroplating plant where water discharge seemed unusually clean. There was a reason: ‘He had a garden hose in his line,” McCarthy said.

Another inspector, Kelly Christenson, says that he has watched plant managers “running across the shop” when he arrived, to unhook the garden hose they have attached to his sampling device.

Surprise inspections keep manufacturers alert, the inspectors say. “You figure if the CHP only worked weekdays from 8-5, everybody would drive at night,” inspector Brad Bateman said.

A Mix of Skills

Inspectors say their job is enjoyable but unusual, because it requires a mix of skills. They must be part diplomat as they meet with plant managers, explain the latest waste treatment technology and persuade them to comply. But they are also chemical detectives, using lab tests, surprise daytime visits and surreptitious nighttime ones to find out whether a firm is illegally dumping toxics.

Lately, several inspectors say, they have stepped up their nighttime monitoring. The hours are lousy: rise at 4 a.m. for a week or so to sample the waste water discharge of one or two plants, then conduct regular daytime inspections.

But surprise inspections are revealing, they say. Districts’ officials have a saying about a plant that’s being monitored for five days to a week at a time: “No one can hold their bladder while you’re looking at them.” Translation: no company can afford to stop work for more than a week. If a company is illegally discharging toxics, an inspector who monitors it carefully can catch it in the act.

Like many of his colleagues, McCarthy, an inspector for six years, got into this profession by obtaining a two-year certificate in waste water technology from Orange Coast College. After graduation in 1979, he walked into a job with the County Sanitation Districts.

Also like his peers, McCarthy considers himself an environmentalist. He wanted this job, he says, because he has always been “concerned about the ocean.” He said he enjoys the work, including the 4 a.m. inspections.

Inspector Returns

McCarthy says he picked Alphanetics for a night sampling after he found an unusually high concentration of copper in a sample taken during a daytime visit. “I figure if there is a compliance problem when I’m on site, they may do something even nastier when I’m not there,” he said.

Three weeks after the night sampling, when the agency had lab tests in hand but had not yet assessed any penalties, McCarthy was back at Alphanetics.

This time it was for a surprise daytime inspection to buttress his case against the firm. Alphanetics President Lopez led the tour of his 15-employee plant past etching machines and several chemical baths, including a clear one said to be copper.

Lopez was cordial with McCarthy but also not happy to see him. “With all the pressure we have from the sanitation districts, we are trying to expand and move to Mexico,” he said at one point.

Machine Turned Off

At the back of the small business, Lopez took McCarthy outside to see Alphanetics’ pretreatment system, a large rectangular machine that was supposed to filter leftover copper from the plant’s waste water.

The machine was turned off and its top was filled with dead leaves. It had been temporarily disconnected for a day or two, Lopez said, because a pump was broken.

McCarthy accepted the explanation--for the moment. Still, he added: “You were in noncompliance with your last sample. We will be talking.”