Sewer System Polluter Blames Former Workers

A Sun Valley businessman who was ordered to pay almost $35,000 for dumping toxic wastes into the local sewer system claimed Wednesday that he was a victim of sabotage.

“It’s the people who were working for me, they set me up,” said Surya P. Shrivastava, 46, president of Photo Chem Etch Corp.

Shrivastava pleaded no contest last Thursday to five charges of a 30-count complaint in Los Angeles Municipal Court. Commissioner Joseph Spada fined him $30,000 and placed him on three years probation. Spada also ordered Shrivastava to pay $4,714 to cover the city’s costs of investigating the case.

On Wednesday, Shrivastava claimed that two employees whom he fired had started a competing company and that one of them “was dumping those things in there and at the same time reporting it to the people.” He said he has been in business 14 years without any other trouble.

“I’m going to sue them, I’m going to sue them,” Shrivastava said. “The truth will come out.”

Mike Qualls, a spokesman for City Atty. James K. Hahn, declined to comment on Shrivastava’s sabotage allegation. “He entered his plea, that tells the story,” Qualls said.

Anonymous Complaint

Shrivastava’s lawyer, Edward A. Rucker of Pasadena, declined to comment on his client’s allegations. But he said he discovered through court records that the anonymous complaint that initiated the investigation in January, 1988, was “from an employee who was discharged from Photo Chem and then immediately put in the employ of a competitor.”

Rucker added, “There is some basis to believe that the original complaint was motivated more out of economic competition than any sense of community altruism.”

Shrivastava was charged in November, 1988, with 30 counts of polluting sewers with illegal wastes that included acids, heavy metals and volatile organic compounds.

City sanitation officials began investigating his business, which manufactures flexible circuits and heat sinks at 7714 San Fernando Road, after receiving an anonymous telephone tip.

Investigators were able to detect the pollutants by installing testing devices in the sewers upstream and downstream from the plant.