Kaiser Settles Over Improper Dumping

A year after being cited for sending infectious waste to a landfill, Kaiser Permanente Medical Center agreed Wednesday to pay the state and county about $25,000 in fines and investigative costs.

Kaiser could have been fined at least $25,000 for each of the 10 incidents for which it was cited last year.

James Pitts, deputy district attorney in charge of environmental prosecutions, said the case had been pending since last May, and the settlement was worked out to clear the case from the books.

Pitts filed a civil suit over the incidents Wednesday, and the settlement was immediately entered, he said. It requires Kaiser to pay $20,000 in fines and $4,828 in investigative reimbursements to the county health and public works departments.

The violations occurred from January to May, 1990, at the county’s Sycamore landfill in Santee. In most incidents, the infectious trash was just a single small bag or container, but in some cases it was several, Pitts said.

Kaiser’s Zion Avenue hospital and clinical facility has had no further violations since last May, apparently because of procedures instituted since the citations, Pitts said.

Jim McBride, spokesman for Kaiser, said the facility has hired people to inspect every large bag of trash for infectious waste mistakenly placed inside. The bags are translucent, so red infectious-waste containers inside can be easily seen, he said.

Kaiser also instituted employee education on waste disposal, he said.

Fewer slip-ups are occurring than when the program first began, but they still happen occasionally, McBride said. Kaiser generates about 20 tons of waste every month, he noted.

Over the last year, two other San Diego County hospitals have had to pay penalties because of improper dumping of infectious waste, Pitts said. They are Paradise Valley in Southeast San Diego and AMI Valley Medical Center in El Cajon.