Toxic Waste Could Cost Firm $162,000

A national construction company was ordered Thursday by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to pay cleanup costs and fines that could top $162,000 for burying up to 50 barrels containing toxic residue at its former branch in Arcadia.

Kiewit Pacific Co. pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of unlawful disposal of hazardous waste and must pay for removal and cleanup costs at the five-acre site, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bill Carter said.

Judge William Klausner fined the Nebraska-based company $50,000 plus $12,000 in restitution to the property’s current owner, the Arcadia Redevelopment Agency, and placed Kiewit on a year’s probation.

The agency bought the parcel at 301 E. Santa Clara St. in September, 1986, when Kiewit moved its offices to Santa Fe Springs. The flattened drums with traces of a cement curing compound were discovered last March, when the agency began excavating the site for development. The slurry-like material, used to set cement, is mildly toxic and contains flammable solvents, Carter said.

The cost of disposing of the barrels and removing the contaminated soil that surrounded them will exceed $100,000, said Shahin Nourishad, the county Health Services Department’s hazardous materials specialist who is supervising the cleanup.

This is not the firm’s first run-in with the department.

Employees buried between 35 to 50 barrels of the same compound and waste oil in 1981, Carter said. Workers in an office across the street reported the activity and the health department ordered the company to dig up the barrels.

The second burial--in 1985-- occurred before dawn, Carter said. Using bulldozers already on the site, “they dug a huge hole in the same location, pushed the barrels in and covered them with dirt,” he said.

The employee responsible had probably misunderstood an order to clean up the yard, Kiewit attorney Stephen Sadowsky said. “He was acting without company knowledge and approval,” Sadowsky said.