EPA Backs Rewards for Exposing Toxic Crime

In front of a huge “toxic crime map” of the San Gabriel Valley, the West Coast’s top federal environmental official and mayors from five cities this week pledged support for an unusual proposal to offer rewards to people who blow the whistle on suspected toxic waste polluters.

The crime map, complete with skull-and-crossbones to indicate severity, shows pollution patterns in the valley. The pollution is largely the result of degreasing solvents once used by area businesses.

Daniel W. McGovern, regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his agency will help pay for advertisements to solicit specific information about ground-water pollution in the San Gabriel Valley. But he said the agency is prohibited by law from contributing directly to the fund being established by the East Valleys Organization.

‘Could Fill a Gap’

Still, he said, the reward program, “could fill a gap . . . and provide significant support for our enforcement effort.” The gap is a significant one, he said, “because we are likely to find that much, if not all, of the contamination in the San Gabriel Valley” resulted from actions predating today’s pollution laws by as much as 40 years.

McGovern spoke Monday at a Baldwin Park pollution conference sponsored by Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Pico Rivera), Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and the East Valleys Organization, a community activist group that originated the idea for a reward fund.

One of Worst Problems

Environmental authorities consider the area to have one of the state’s worst ground-water pollution problems. McGovern said it will require $800 million to restore the quality of the ground water to an acceptable level.

South El Monte Mayor Albert G. Perez told the gathering at the St. John the Baptist Church that he will try to persuade his fellow council members to donate $15,000 to the fund. Mayors from Baldwin Park, Azusa, Rosemead and West Covina also said they will solicit support from their councils. Unlike state and federal reward programs, this one would not require the criminal conviction of a polluter in order for a tipster to get a reward.

But not everyone praised the program. Assemblywomen Sally Tanner (D-El Monte), among the dozens of community, state and federal officials at the meeting, expressed concerns. Perhaps, she said, the reward program will be more trouble than it is worth.

It would do no good, she said, if people called and said they saw someone dumping a yellow liquid into the ground 20 years ago. “How does one know what the yellow material was and how does one prove that the yellow material was toxic?” Tanner asked.

Points Well-Taken

“Your points are well-taken,” McGovern replied. In a speech, he said, “What’s needed is not a shotgun blast, but instead carefully timed rifle shots to solicit information our investigators and enforcement attorneys need.”

As an example, he cited the ads the EPA placed in newspapers during the summer, soliciting information from people involved with firms that may have dumped toxic wastes at a dump once run by Operating Industries Inc. in Monterey Park. He described those ads as extremely successful, saying EPA received more than 100 calls, “a majority of which provided useful information.”

The effort, he said, would not only be aimed at what happened in the past but also to help sensitize people to preventing future pollution.

John Korey of the EVO said he hopes the reward will attract people who actually performed the dumping or had first-hand knowledge as employees or former employees of firms that used toxic materials.

During the coming month, Korey said Reiner, Torres and representatives of the East Valleys group will work out details of the reward program, which Korey said may be in effect by early next year. Reiner said he will push for legislation that would require that, as a condition of probation, polluters who are convicted would be required to contribute to the reward fund.

EPA Criticized

A number of the politicians used the meeting as an opportunity to criticize the EPA’s pollution cleanup efforts.

“What about treatment facilities? How much (money) would that take? Considerably less,” Tanner said.

Torres wanted to know why the EPA does not expand its staff working on the pollution project in the San Gabriel Valley.

Likewise, Baldwin Park Mayor Leo King said: “I’m appalled that nothing has been done to this date. We cannot tolerate this any longer.”

“You’re absolutely right,” McGovern said. “We should clean this site as quickly as we can. But we can’t come up with quick fixes to problems that were 30 and 40 years in existence.”

In the past, Torres said, he had not been pleased with the manner EPA has handled the issue of the ground water pollution. But he said he is now “pleased to say EPA has become more responsive to community concerns.”

At the meeting’s conclusion, many participants signed a letter asking EPA Administrator William Reilly to come to the valley to hear residents’ concerns about the pollution.