ANAHEIM : Paint Company to Pay County $250,000

A paint manufacturer has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle felony charges that its employees illegally hid thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals in sawdust and trash that was hauled to a county landfill, the district attorney announced Wednesday.

Orange County prosecutors said the case against W.C. Richards Co., an Illinois corporation, and the former vice president of its Anaheim plant is one of the most serious pollution cases in the county because of the volume of hazardous material involved.

The corporation pleaded no contest to one felony count of violating state hazardous waste laws, and Deputy Dist. Atty. Gerald G. Johnston dropped four remaining counts.

Five felony counts are still pending against the Anaheim plant’s ex-vice president, Marion Bruce Hale, 44, of Brea.

When the case was filed in August, prosecutors said Hale directed his employees on a daily basis to mix paint wastes and chemical solvents with sawdust and shovel it into a trash bin that was taken to the Olinda landfill in Brea. Legal disposal of the chemicals in special waste dumps would have cost the plant several thousand dollars per week, Johnston said.

Louis Barta, vice president of W.C. Richards in Illinois, said he could not comment on the alleged actions by Hale, other than to say that Hale is no longer employed by the company.

Company officials said in a statement Wednesday that they agreed not to contest one count “to avoid expensive, protracted litigation.”

“The company does not believe that it has violated the environmental laws or regulations, has never knowingly tolerated any breach of these requirements by its employers or agents and is cooperating fully with the officials of Orange County and the state of California,” the company’s statement said.

Johnston said he was pleased with the settlement.

“In Orange County, it’s one of the largest settlements (of an environmental case) we’ve had,” he said. “It’s a significant amount of money.”

Some of the money will be used to purchase extraction wells and other pollution controls at the Brea landfill, where toxic chemicals have seeped into the soil.

Employees at the Anaheim plant estimated that between 150 gallons and 300 gallons of hazardous waste was thrown out illegally every day, Johnston said. The company had told city and county inspectors that it was recycling its waste, officials said.

A preliminary hearing in the case against Hale is scheduled Jan. 28. Johnston said no settlement negotiations are occurring with Hale, who could face jail time if convicted.