Businessman Jailed Over Tainted Soil Cleanup

A Long Beach businessman was jailed for two days this week after failing to obey a court order to clean up more than 50,000 tons of contaminated soil that he collected on a vacant lot in Wilmington.

Paul Bouchard was jailed Monday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski, who found that Bouchard and his company, Brent Petroleum, made inadequate progress on a March order to remove the soil piled at 1420 Coil Ave.

The soil mounds have contributed to ozone air pollution because they contain petroleum and volatile organic compounds that were not enclosed or treated, permitting fumes to escape into the air, prosecutors from the South Coast Air Quality Management District said.

“The L.A. Basin has one of the worst problems in the country with air quality,” Zebrowski said Monday. “Here we have someone who doesn’t seem to think that is very important.”

The sentence and an accompanying $1,000 fine against Brent Petroleum are just the latest legal setbacks for Bouchard and his company, which once faced a criminal investigation by the district attorney’s office and still must contend with lawsuits by a former landlord and neighbor.

Bouchard also was still being held in County Jail Wednesday afternoon under a separate court order to report his financial status to a creditor who is trying to collect back rent.

Bouchard charged $55 a ton or more to stockpile soil, usually from companies cleaning up abandoned oil fields or removing underground gas tanks.

Bouchard told the companies that he would use the soil to manufacture asphalt. But Brent Petroleum never obtained a permit to use the contaminated soil for asphalt and apparently had no intention of doing so, said Joseph Panasiti, a deputy prosecutor with the AQMD, because witnesses never saw such equipment operating at the Coil Avenue lot.

In March, air district officials were granted the court order requiring cleanup of the site.

“We know of two loads of soil that were removed. That’s all,” said Cindy Simovich, another AQMD prosecutor.

Bouchard’s attorney told the judge during Monday’s half-hour hearing that the businessman is in financial trouble and cannot afford the $450,000 it will cost to move the soil.

Attorney Arlene Binder said Bouchard operated his business in good faith but ran out of money this year because he lost some clients and paid exorbitant legal fees to defend the myriad legal actions against him.

But Zebrowski was unmoved and found Bouchard in contempt of the cleanup order.

The judge questioned the claim that Bouchard could not afford the cleanup. “At $55 a ton and with 50,000 tons, we are talking about several million dollars,” Zebrowski said. “We know there was a lot of money, and we don’t know where that is. If the problem is not cleaned up, we are going to have more contempt proceedings.”

Bouchard’s two-day jail sentence was extended when sheriff’s officials found that a warrant had been issued for the businessman’s arrest when he failed to produce information on his finances in another court case.

Long Beach Superior Court Judge Richard F. Charvat ordered Tuesday that Bouchard remain jailed on $1,000 bail pending a hearing Friday in that case, in which Bouchard has been ordered to reveal his ability to pay a civil judgment he lost to C. Brewer Terminals Inc. of Long Beach.

A lawyer for the terminal company said Bouchard owes the Honolulu-based firm about $10,000 in back rent for a warehouse he leased in Long Beach.

Bouchard’s attorney in that case could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the pressure remains on Bouchard to remove the soil from the Coil Avenue property.

Besides the AQMD court order, the Japanese firm that leased one acre of land to Brent Petroleum on Coil Avenue has filed its own lawsuit to force Bouchard to clean up the property.

Konoike Transport and Engineering USA Inc. alleges in its suit that Bouchard spread soil over the entire 11 acres that the company owns on Coil Avenue, rather than just the one acre he leased.

The company said it had hoped to begin construction in March of a cold-storage warehouse, but the suit alleges that the firm still cannot begin work because of the mess left by Brent Petroleum.

Southern Pacific Transportation Co. also filed suit against Brent Petroleum, demanding the removal of soil that it said spilled onto its adjacent railroad right of way.

The Environmental Crimes Section of the district attorney’s office, meanwhile, investigated Brent Petroleum for possible illegal transportation or disposal of hazardous waste, Deputy Dist. Atty. David H. Guthman said.

But the case was dropped in May after the county Department of Health Services said the soil was not contaminated to levels that it considered hazardous, Guthman said.

Bouchard continues to operate a second soil dump on Cervera Avenue near Anaheim Street in Wilmington, not far from the Coil Avenue dump. Brent Petroleum has not been cited for the operation of the Cervera dump.