Hazardous Waste Case Brings Fine of $125,000

An executive of Western Waste Industries, who served on the state Waste Management Board for 10 years, has been fined $125,000 after pleading no contest to charges of illegally disposing of hazardous waste mixed with household garbage.

The fine imposed this week against Hacob (Jake) Shirvanian is the largest ever assessed against an individual for an environmental crime in Los Angeles County, according to the district attorney’s office.

Shirvanian, vice president and manager of Western Waste, was convicted of three misdemeanor counts of illegal disposal of heavy metals and dry-cleaning wastes that were dumped at landfills in the San Gabriel Valley and Glendale.

Felony Charges

Western Waste also entered a no-contest plea Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court on three felony counts of illegally mixing hazardous waste with garbage at its trash transfer station in Carson between January, 1985, and July, 1986.

Judge Alexander Williams III fined Western Waste $100,000 as part of a settlement agreement reached last February.

Deputy Dist. Atty. William Carter said Shirvanian and Western Waste’s conduct was “very serious” because it was premeditated and involved “intentional dumping on a frequent basis.”

Carter said “a no-contest plea is the same as a guilty plea in the eyes of the court. It still constitutes a conviction.”

But Shirvanian said in an interview that he was not admitting guilt. He denied that any mixing of hazardous waste and household garbage took place. “You don’t do things like that unless you are a mental case,” he said.

Shirvanian, 66, of Glendale, said he was “saving the grief and the money” of a prolonged trial. “The whole case is just a made-up case. . . . The whole thing is sickening,” he said. “I just want to forget about it.”

From May, 1973, to May, 1983, Shirvanian served on the state Waste Management Board as an advocate for waste companies in Southern California. He was first appointed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and was reappointed by Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., said Chris Peck, the board’s deputy director

Carter said former Western Waste employees told investigators that excess hazardous waste was dumped at the transfer station in Carson whenever trucks headed for licensed hazardous waste dumps in Santa Barbara and Kings County exceeded legal weight limits.

Carter said Western Waste workers shoveled the nickel and chromium waste out of the trucks to reduce the weight to legal limits. The mud-like material was then mixed with household garbage and hauled to the local landfills.

Charges Pending

The combined waste was dumped at the Puente Hills landfill near Hacienda Heights, the BKK landfill in West Covina and the Scholl Canyon landfill near Glendale. None of the landfills are licensed to handle such hazardous waste, and none of the illegal waste has been recovered, Carter said.

The material included chromium and nickel from a wire manufacturer in Santa Fe Springs and soil and garbage contaminated with perchloroethylene, a dry-cleaning chemical from Roehl Corp. in Wilmington. Charges against Roehl and a company executive are still pending.

Last February, Western Waste agreed to plead no contest to the waste charges and pay a $100,000 fine as part of a settlement of a criminal antitrust case. The company also agreed to pay a $900,000 fine after pleading no contest to charges that it engaged in a plot to eliminate competition and to artificially inflate commercial trash hauling prices.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner described the $1 million in fines in the antitrust and illegal disposal cases as “one of the largest corporate criminal fines in California history.”

A Western Waste sales manager, Ishkan (Ara) Gordian, was sentenced to 45 days in jail under terms of a plea bargain. The penalty was the first imposed under felony provisions of the Cartwright Act, the state’s basic antitrust law.

The antitrust case alleged that Western Waste engaged in a concerted sales effort or “blitz” in early 1985 to take commercial customers from competitors.