Ventura Agrees to Hazardous Waste Fine : Settlement: Crews disposed of sludge at sewage plant near harbor. But no contaminated water has been detected.

The city of Ventura, accused of illegally disposing hazardous wastes at a city sewage plant, agreed Friday to pay $19,406 in penalties and to obey a permanent injunction governing hazardous-waste disposal.

The agreement settles a civil complaint filed Friday in Ventura County Superior Court that accused the city of failing to properly manage its wastes and failing to determine before disposal whether wastes were hazardous.

The city “agreed to put in place good waste management process,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Strickland, who filed the complaint. “We consider the penalty substantial for a city,” Strickland said, adding that the city could be liable for more penalties if it violates the injunction.

“It’s not our purpose to extract grave amounts of money from a government entity,” she said. The key element of the settlement, she said, is that it “puts the burden on city management” to make sure employees know and follow the rules.

Strickland said the violations that led to the complaint occurred in March, 1990, at the city sewage plant on Spinnaker Drive, near Ventura Harbor. Workers disposed of sewage sludge by spreading it on the ground, even though it contained hazardous chemical polymers that could have caused ground-water contamination.

City Manager John Baker said the polymers were added to hasten the drying process, and that workers intended to move the sludge to an approved disposal site when it was dry. He said they did not realize that polymers posed a threat to ground water. “When it was discovered that we were not supposed to put it on the ground, we went through a major, major cleanup,” Baker said. Tests have found no ground-water contamination, he added.

Strickland agreed that the workers apparently were relying on outdated environmental guidelines when they decided that the polymers were not dangerous. For that reason, she said, no criminal charges were filed. “There were some extenuating circumstances,” she said.

Strickland, however, said the county’s Environmental Health Department looked into the city’s record of waste-management practices and found other violations. Among them was illegal discharge of waste water into Sanjon Creek from a city maintenance facility on Sanjon Road.

The county investigation “caused us to be concerned that they did not have an effective program of waste analysis and waste management,” Strickland said. Since the investigation began, she said, the city has been “very cooperative and very concerned.”

Baker said city officials “have much greater knowledge now about what we should do.” As for the $19,406 in penalties, he said the city budget allows for such contingencies. But he added, “It’s $19,000 that we don’t do something else with.”