Irvine Firm Faces Charges of Toxic Dumping : Environment: The case shows the increasing willingness of prosecutors to use criminal sanctions.

Diceon Electronics Inc. and its two top executives are facing felony charges of illegally discharging toxic wastes at a manufacturing facility in Chatsworth, another example of a willingness on the part of authorities to use criminal sanctions against suspected corporate polluters.

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office charged in a complaint filed Tuesday that Irvine-based Diceon, one of the country’s leading independent circuit-board manufacturers, illegally released large amounts of acid, lead, copper, and other toxic materials into the sewage system between November, 1988, and April of this year.

The district attorney’s complaint comes on the heels of a $262,000 fine levied against the firm by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in June for failure to report the nature and amount of toxic chemicals released into the air, water and ground in 1987.

The fine was the largest penalty proposed for any of the 42 companies cited by the EPA at that time. Diceon said at the time that it would appeal the EPA action.

Tuesday’s complaint includes seven felony charges and four misdemeanor charges of unlawful disposal of toxic waste and related violations, all of which name the company and former director of manufacturing Richard Thomas.

Diceon President Roland G. Matthews and Executive Vice President Peter S. Jonas are named in one felony count and four misdemeanor counts. They are charged in connection with alleged violations that took place after upper management had been alerted to the problem by a county Department of Public Works search of the facility in January.

Diceon said in a statement that it had taken corrective actions that were approved by the county Department of Public Works, which is responsible for monitoring discharges into the sewer system, and that it had hoped that these actions would prevent a criminal complaint.

The company said it “does not feel that it or any of the individuals violated any criminal statute and the company expects full vindication in court.”

David Guthman, head of the Los Angeles district attorney’s environmental crimes division, said the fact that felony charges were filed indicated that his office judged the illegal discharges to be “egregious and done knowingly and willingly.”

Guthman estimated that there were about a half-dozen felony disposal cases now pending in Los Angeles courts and added that 11 businessmen had gone to jail in the past year for environmental crimes. Until the past several years, he said, civil enforcement actions had generally been used in environmental cases but the prosecutor’s office had now “picked up the pace” in the area of criminal prosecutions.

He called environmental crimes of this type “crimes of violence” in which “the dead bodies might not start showing up for 20, 30, or 40 years.” For one of the pollutants--copper--Guthman said the level of discharges monitored were over 200 times the legal limit.

Penalties for felony disposal of hazardous waste are imprisonment of 16 months to three years, and fines ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 for each count.

Diceon has suffered financial reversals in recent months which it attributed to the broad slowdown in computer sales. The firm recently shut down a manufacturing plant in Santa Ana.

The firm reported a $2.3-million loss for the year ended Sept. 30 against net income of $9.9 million for the year earlier, and revenue dropped 16% to $118.7 million.