Firm Fined $200,000 in Toxic Waste Dumping

A London-based company was ordered Monday to pay nearly $200,000 after pleading no contest to charges that its Van Nuys electronics plant illegally dumped toxic wastes into the city’s sewer system, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office said.

The judgment against ICI Americas includes $165,000 in court-ordered contributions to nonprofit environmental groups--the largest amount ever imposed on a company accused of illegal dumping into Los Angeles sewers, said City Atty. James K. Hahn.

Los Angeles Municipal Judge Robert P. O’Neill also ordered the company to pay $29,000 to the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and the Los Angeles Police Department’s hazardous materials unit, Hahn said.

ICI Americas, an American subsidiary of the multinational corporation ICI, was charged in October after an investigation into the now-defunct ARBCO Electronics Inc., a circuit-board plant in the 7800 block of Gloria Avenue. City Bureau of Sanitation officials detected illegal disposals of toxic materials from the plant in December, 1989, and January, 1990, said Deputy City Atty. Donald Kass, who handled the case.

On Monday, ICI Americas pleaded no contest to 10 counts of illegally discharging heavy metals, acids and corrosives into a city sewer. If the company meets the conditions of the court judgment, the city will drop 29 additional misdemeanor counts that had been filed against it, Kass said.

ARBCO’s former general manager, Terrell Layne Richardson, 55, of Valencia, is charged with one count of illegally disposing of hazardous wastes, according to Kass. If convicted, Richardson faces a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine, Kass said.