Clandestine Toxic Waste Exports to Mexico on Rise

A growing number of Southern California businesses are clandestinely trucking their hazardous wastes to Mexico to dodge increasingly stringent and costly environmental laws here, according to law enforcement investigators.

Although there are few hard statistics to chronicle the illicit trafficking--in large part because of spotty enforcement--government officials as well as haulers and generators of the waste said they believe that the practice is on the upswing.

William Carter, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who prosecutes environmental crimes, cites a “big hole in enforcement.” Reports of illegal waste shipments to Mexico come into his office about twice a week, indicating a “steady stream” of such shipments, he said.

“To some of the people who are involved, Mexico is one big trash can and it doesn’t really matter what goes down there,” Carter said. “It’s not realistic to think what we send down there won’t come back in foods, water pollution, air pollution or pottery we buy from Mexico.”

Authorities predict the problem is only going to worsen. On Tuesday, a new federal rule was announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that is expected to make legal dumping even more costly.

The rule, which was attacked by environmental groups as too weak, will require more kinds of hazardous wastes to be treated before they can be dumped in a landfill. A substance is considered hazardous if it poses a threat to humans or to the environment.

By May, 1992, most waste deemed hazardous under the rule will have to be treated to reduce its toxicity before the residues can be taken to a landfill. The restrictions could become significantly tighter if expected challenges by environmental groups succeed.

Sgt. Lance Erickson, an investigator in the California Highway Patrol’s environmental crimes unit, joined other law enforcement officials in predicting even more illegal trafficking of hazardous wastes because of the new restrictions.

“I think (the trafficking) is going to increase because the prices are going to go up again,” Erickson said. “The bottom line is greed and money.”

In one of the few cases now under investigation, drums that has contained hazardous waste from the United States eventually were sold in a working-class Mexican neighborhood for water storage. “In most cases, the barrel is the commodity of value down there,” Carter said.

In another instance, drums of cyanide solution from a North Hollywood metal-plating business that were destined for Mexico were listed as new products in the shipment manifest prepared by the trucker. The Mexicali address given as the destination turned out to be a wheat field.

“We are noticing this problem with increasing frequency,” said Cesar Catalan of the Secretariat of Urban Development and Ecology (SEDUE), the Mexican version of the EPA. Catalan said the materials are dumped “any place that isn’t populated” and in places “that are easy to reach,” such as spots along the border.

The smuggling cases are difficult to prove, say California prosecutors, who often must rely on informants and witnesses. Any material that is considered waste under federal or state law cannot be taken across the border without the permission of Mexican environmental authorities. A one-two punch of increasingly strict environmental regulations and fewer legal landfills willing to take hazardous wastes hits hardest against such firms as metal platers, aerospace parts makers and radiator repair shops, which generate large amounts of toxic garbage.

To dispose of hazardous wastes legally in this country, a generator must have his waste transported, treated and disposed of by a licensed firm. The process is increasingly costly and California landfills that will accept hazardous wastes are dwindling in number.

A drum of hazardous waste that may have cost $140 to dispose of six years ago now costs $300, according to a waste management company. One prosecutor said the costs can go as high as $1,000 a barrel.

Small- and medium-sized toxic waste generators--often hard pressed to make ends meet--are responsible for much of the illicit trafficking, investigators say.

Larry Bishop, a hazardous materials specialist in Santa Barbara County, said if he was “in the business and had a choice of spending $500,000 to get rid of chromic acid or to give someone $5,000 to get rid of it, the economic incentive is so great. . . .

“People are under a lot of pressure to do something with it and, unfortunately with small business people, it hits them particularly hard.”

Barry Roeser, general partner in a Baldwin Park hazardous waste consulting and referral service, told The Times he approached a financially troubled lumber company in the San Gabriel Valley a month ago to arrange for legal disposal of the firm’s hazardous wastes. At the last minute, Roeser said, the businessman decided not to use his services.

“ ‘I don’t need you any more,’ ” Roeser quoted the businessman as saying. “ ‘I’m sending it to Mexico.’

“If you can get away with it,” Roeser said in an interview, “what can I say? I know he took it to Mexico. What he did with it I don’t know. . . . I imagine it just got dumped somewhere.”

The likelihood of being apprehended is remote, authorities say. Typically, U.S. customs inspectors watch only traffic headed north from Mexico. Southbound traffic entering Mexico gets little notice on the U.S. side, and there are reports that bribery occurs among Mexican border authorities.

The CHP has only five investigators from Fresno to the Mexican border probing illegal waste shipments. The EPA, which is in charge of policing waste shipments across the border, has only one agent and two investigators to enforce several federal environmental statutes in California as well as three other Western states and U.S. islands in the Pacific.

“I don’t really have the staff to pursue this export thing,” said EPA resident agent-in-charge David Wilma, who is based in San Francisco.

Although some officials have pleaded for years for strict border controls on hazardous waste, a San Diego County Hazardous Waste Task Force is only now formulating a plan to crack down.

Anastacio Medina, a Los Angeles County hazardous materials investigator, said he urged participants at a San Diego hazardous waste workshop called by the EPA in late 1984 to take more action.

“We were told to mind our own business and let the feds do what they are supposed to be doing--even though we know they are not doing it,” Medina said.

“We thought it was inhuman the way (waste) was being handled in the hills and ravines of Tijuana,” he said. “Eventually these materials--when the rains come--are carried by the water down to the Tijuana River bed and contaminate some of the (well) water that Tijuana depends on. It also runs across the border into San Ysidro, so we do have a mutual interest.”

Los Angeles County environmental prosecutors say most of their time is spent on illegal dumping within the county, not on tracking substances across the border. The district attorney’s office, which has one of the nation’s toughest environmental crime units, has prosecuted at least 100 cases involving illegal disposal within the region--in vacant lots, the Santa Monica Mountains and even back yards. In contrast, the office is now investigating about six cases of trafficking to Mexico. Charges in one case may be filed this week.

Just as in local dumping, the smuggling of wastes into Mexico often is done by individuals who make a living in such trafficking.

Describing the usual arrangements for exporting wastes, prosecutors say transporters and brokers typically collect a fee from waste generators to pick up the waste and provide the generator with the name of a facility and address in Mexico where the waste purportedly will be used as a new product--possibly in a manufacturing process. The waste often is put into clean drums and labeled as new before it reaches the border. Shipping papers are filled out listing the cargo as unused.

Sometimes the transporter both hauls and arranges a contact on the Mexican border and sometimes he uses a broker to act as the middleman to arrange the Mexican connection.

In any case, the fee paid by the generator is substantially less than the cost of dumping the toxics legally. Customs officials rarely, if ever, open up such drums.

“The generator relies on these brokers or these transporters and is naive,” said Carter of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. “They want to believe that this stuff is (a new) product in Mexico, and that they are going to save money and do it legally.

“That is what they want to believe. Whether they do believe it is a different story.”

By labeling the waste as an unused material, transporters and generators try to take advantage of some ambiguities in the laws, investigators say.

“It’s really kind of an honor system,” Carter said. “We get stuck in this quandary of what is waste and what is (a new) product.”

Legally, the generator is responsible for the waste and can be held liable if it is improperly dumped. But tracing waste once it gets past the Mexican border is difficult. Although some waste, such as old paint, may be used again in Mexico, other toxic materials may simply be dumped in fields or streams, authorities say.

“It’s a big scam,” said Bill Jones, chief of investigators for the Los Angeles County Health Department’s hazardous materials control program. “And it’s the old story: Once you get to the border, the horses stop. We can’t go any further.”

As serious as it is, the trafficking of hazardous waste from California to Mexico is but one facet of the growing problem of toxic exports. Hundreds of businesses owned by Americans and other foreigners operating on the Mexican side of the border are required by agreements reached between the various nations to return their hazardous waste to “the country of origin” for proper disposal.

But state health authorities said they had no idea how much, if any, of the waste is being returned to California. Some authorities fear that waste produced by the Mexican border firms is being illegally dumped in Mexico.

“We don’t have as good a handle on it as we would like to,” state Health Department spokesman Allan Hirsch said Tuesday. “We certainly hope it’s not being dumped clandestinely in Mexico.” An EPA enforcement agent said the agency has gotten reports of wastes from the border firms being returned to California for treatment, but he could not say how much.

While several authorities estimated that perhaps only 10% of toxic waste generated in California is shipped out-of-state illegally, that still adds up to a formidable amount. California ranks 15th in the nation in legal toxic waste exports--about 15.8 million pounds in 1987--according to an accounting made public this week by Inform, a New York City-based environmental research organization.

Authorities say there are at least 50,000 generators of hazardous waste in the state, about 17,500 in Los Angeles County. According to the California Department of Health Services, only about 15 California firms have legally transported hazardous materials to foreign countries, primarily to Mexico, since reporting began in 1984.

To be exported legally into Mexico, the hazardous substance must be usable or recyclable and officially acceptable to the Mexican government. But many firms can’t or won’t meet that test.

Francis Odell, president of a large, modern metal-plating firm in Bell Gardens, said some metal-plating businesses are in such financial disarray that they are going out of business.

Although most firms that remain comply with environmental regulations, Odell said, “a minority” look for the easy way out.

“They’ve got an economic problem of what to do,” he said, “and if they are given an offer to truck it off to Mexico, what do you do? It’s tough to be moral when you’re broke.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Patrick McDonnell from Tijuana and Hector Tobar in Los Angeles.