GARDEN GROVE : Firm Pleads Guilty to Illegal Dumping

A Garden Grove manufacturing company pleaded guilty Monday to 25 felony counts, admitting that it routinely hid chemical waste in sawdust and illegally dumped it in trash taken to an Orange landfill.

Laminating Co. of America agreed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to pay $525,000 in fines over the next three years, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Both the number of counts and the amount of the penalty make it one of the largest cases of illegal dumping in the county. U.S. attorneys in Los Angeles and an environmental task force considered it a major case, saying that tens of thousands of gallons of waste were illegally dumped in the landfill.

The company, also known as LCOA, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, 23 counts of illegal disposal and one count of illegal transport of hazardous waste.

In an indictment last year, a federal grand jury charged that Laminating Co. employees cleaned machines with methylene chloride, an industrial solvent, then poured it into a small dumpster containing sawdust. The contents of the dumpster were then dumped into a trash bin and taken to the county-run Santiago Landfill on Santiago Canyon Road near Chapman Avenue.

The indictment charged that the dumping went on for several years “with the full knowledge and approval of the company’s officers.” Authorities discovered the practice in 1988.

Officials for the company, which produces printed circuit board parts, could not be reached for comment Monday evening.

Seventeen other counts against the company will be dismissed at a sentencing hearing in which the agreement will be made final, said Carole Levitzky, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

The case stemmed from an FBI and California Highway Patrol investigation of Raymond Franco of El Toro and David Torres of Huntington Park. Franco and Torres were indicted this year on charges that they accepted money from California businesses to dispose of waste that was then dumped illegally in Tijuana.

Investigators said the Laminating Co. was under surveillance in 1988 because it had hired the two men, who often picked up waste there. During stakeouts in connection with the Mexico dumping case, investigators said, they said they happened to see Laminating Co. employees putting waste in the dumpster.

County landfills accept only non-hazardous garbage because of laws designed to protect underground water supplies.

State and federal laws require hazardous waste to be disposed of only at places where special precautions are taken. Industries usually must pay at least $500 per 55-gallon drum to dispose of such waste legally. County landfills, by contrast, charge only a few dollars per ton of waste.