Company Fined Over Waste Water Charge
The Arrowhead Industrial Water company was fined $500,000 Friday after pleading no contest to illegally discharging hazardous levels of acidic waste water into the Los Angeles sewer system.
The company’s operations manager, Ray Lamoureux, also pleaded no contest to the charge and was sentenced by Superior Court Judge David Horowitz to one year of probation and fined $5,000.
The district attorney’s office said the case against Arrowhead--which treats waste water from other industries at a plant south of downtown Los Angeles--arose from an investigation that began in April, 1988, when the city’s Sanitation Bureau received information that led to monitoring of the company’s sewer discharges. A short time later, the city Board of Public Works found the company in violation of its permit and sealed the firm’s sewer connections for 60 days.
Arrowhead later instituted around-the-clock monitoring of its waste-water discharge and also made a substantial investment to prevent future violations, prosecutors said.
Arrowhead Industrial Water also paid a $500,000 fine after it was convicted of illegally disposing of hazardous waste in city sewers in 1985.
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