Local News in Brief : Costa Mesa : Times to Pay $5,000 Fine After Accidental Spill

Without admitting guilt, The Times Orange County Edition has agreed to pay a $5,000 fine in connection with an Oct. 27, 1988, chemical spill at the newspaper’s Costa Mesa plant, a company spokeswoman said Thursday.

“There was a chemical spill, a discharge of chromium, that was contained in the water in the computer room cooling system in Orange County,” said Laura Morgan, Times spokeswoman. “We began a cleanup procedure and contacted the fire department.”

The chromium was accidentally discharged with 300 gallons of waste water at the Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., into a storm drain that flowed into the Greenville-Banning Flood Control Channel, Times attorney Rhonda Heth said.

The California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Santa Ana Region, filed a complaint against The Times seeking a fine of $5,000 and alleging that a report had not been filed prior to the spill, Heth said. Companies that plan to discharge waste are required to file a report before they do so. But in this case, The Times said, the discharge was accidental.

The Times has reached a tentative agreement with the water quality agency in which the newspaper will pay $5,000 and the Regional Water Quality Control Board will drop the term negligent from the complaint, Morgan said.

“By agreeing to pay the $5,000, we are not acknowledging wrongdoing or violation of the law,” Morgan said. “We are merely trying to resolve this in the most expeditious way possible.”

Heth said the Regional Water Quality Control Board is expected to approve the agreement at its March 10 regular meeting.

A spokesman for the Regional Water Quality Control Board could not be reached for comment Thursday.