Guilty Plea Entered in Dumping Case : Environment: Civilian worker for U.S. Navy at the 32nd Street Naval Station admits directing subordinates to discard toxic chemical in an ordinary trash dumpster.

Seven weeks after a federal grand jury returned a felony indictment against him, a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy has pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the illegal disposal of hazardous waste, U.S. Atty. William Braniff announced Friday.

James Allen Ferrin, a former supervisor at the hazardous waste storage facility at the 32nd Street Naval Station, pleaded guilty Thursday, just five days before he was scheduled to go to trial.

He admitted that he had directed his subordinates to mix methyl isocyanate, a highly toxic chemical, with absorbent and to dispose of the mixture in an ordinary trash dumpster.

Ferrin, 29, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $50,000 fine per day of violation and up to three years of supervised release. District Judge Gordon Thompson set Ferrin’s sentencing for March 9.

Federal prosecutors said the Ferrin case is the eighth in the nation in which a government employee was convicted of violating federal environmental statutes for actions taken in the course of his government employment.

It is the second such case in San Diego this year.

In October, when the grand jury returned the indictment against Ferrin, he was arraigned on four felony counts punishable by a maximum penalty of 20 years in jail and more than $400,000 in fines.

In addition to dumping methyl isocyanate--a form of which killed more than 3,400 people in a 1984 spill in Bhopal, India--Ferrin was charged with dumping two other hazardous wastes: lead dioxide and trichloroethylene.

Ferrin was also accused of intentionally mislabeling a chemical container to indicate it had been stored less than a year.

The storage yard he supervised--the Transfer, Storage and Disposal facility run by the Navy Public Works Center at the 32nd Street Naval Station--is authorized to store hazardous waste up to a year.

As part of a plea agreement, those additional charges will be dropped at the time of sentencing in exchange for Ferrin’s guilty plea, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Melanie K. Pierson.

Since February, when an internal Navy investigation revealed wrongdoing, Ferrin has been demoted and has been working under close supervision as a waste handler. Navy officials are still considering whether to fire Ferrin, who has worked for the Navy since August, 1988.

In a similar local case, a supervisor at the 32nd Street Naval Station Auto Repair Facility pleaded guilty in April, 1991, to a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act in connection with the discharge of radiator fluid into Chollas Creek.