D.A. Report Urges Caution in Waste Management Deal : Refuse: San Diego County report says the firm has a history of environmental sins and public corruption.

Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller warned Wednesday that “extreme caution” should be exercised before San Diego County and cities contract with Waste Management Inc., the nation’s largest trash company.

In a 58-page report requested by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Miller’s staff scolded the company for its purported history of environmental sins, public corruption and attempts to “gain undue influence over government officials.”

The report, 15 months in the making, found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the company’s San Diego County subsidiaries.

But it claimed that Waste Management’s method of lobbying for influence, including a $50,000 donation to the nonprofit Sail San Diego project headed by County Supervisor Brian Bilbray, “suggest an unseemly effort . . . to manipulate local government for its own business ends.

“If unchecked, these practices, like other more direct forms of improper attempts to gain influence, may have a corrupting impact on local government and lead to decisions unsuitable to the best interests of the public,” the report stated.

The report was ordered in December, 1990, when the company was seeking county approval to privately own and operate a landfill in Gregory Canyon, alongside the San Luis Rey River at Pala in North County.

County supervisors later rejected the notion of allowing any company to privately own and operate a county landfill, but Waste Management still owns the property in partnership with two North County businessmen David Lowry and Hal Jensen.

Waste Management did $6 billion in business nationally in 1990. Its subsidiaries include Waste Management of San Diego, which handles both commercial and multi-residential trash as well as a separate contract with the city to handle curbside recycling for 40,000 customers.

The company also owns Universal Refuse Removal in El Cajon, and Oceanside Disposal, also known as Waste Management of North County, which picks up trash in Fallbrook and other parts of unincorporated North County.

Another Waste Management company, Chemical Waste Management, owns a $20-million incineration plant near Tijuana that was mentioned in the report.

“Despite company assurances to the contrary, local and national environmental groups have expressed concern over the manner in which the plant may be operated and the threat that it poses to the environment,” the report stated.

Waste Management officials at the firm’s home office in Oak Brook, Ill. said Wednesday that the report “provided no new information and was replete with inaccurate statements and half-truths taken out of context.”

J. Steven Bergerson, vice president and general counsel for Waste Management, described as “particularly malicious and scurrilous” parts of the report that linked organized crime to companies that were later acquired by Waste Management, which does business with 1,500 public agencies around the nation.

The report noted that SCA Services Inc., at one time the nation’s third largest waste-handling firm, had been targeted by the Justice Department over the years for its alleged ties to organized crime figures, and that, in 1984, Waste Management bought SCA.

But Bergerson said that “Waste Management acquired absolutely none of the alleged unsavory individuals or companies.”

Bob Morris, director of public policy at the company’s regional office in Irvine, said the Los Angeles law firm of O’Melveny & Myers would “review the report after conducting its own impartial investigation.” The results, he said, should be known by mid-April.

The report recommended that county Supervisor Bilbray “would be well advised to abstain” from voting on Waste Management issues before the county because of Bilbray’s involvement with Sail San Diego, which received $50,000 from Waste Management.

Sail San Diego, which has since changed its name to the San Diego Youth Sailing Foundation, was established to help support the Chula Vista Yacht Club’s entry into the Little America’s Cup, a catamaran version of the America’s Cup races.

Bilbray said he will seek further advice from the district attorney’s office, but noted that he generally has voted against Waste Management’s interests when the company has appeared before him.

He said that, after reading the report, “I wouldn’t rent my apartment or home to that company.”

The report also scolded Lowry, saying that he was was motivated by a personal profit when, as chairman of the advisory Fallbrook Planning Group, he voted to oppose the county’s consideration of establishing a landfill on Aspen Road in Fallbrook.

Lowry and Jensen, who owns a paving company, already were assembling property at Gregory Canyon to pitch as an alternative landfill site for the county, ultimately in partnership with Waste Management, the report said. And, by voting against Aspen Road, “Lowry essentially was ensuring that there would be less competition against the site that he and Jensen were acquiring.”

Because the planning group was advisory only to county supervisors, Lowry’s action was not criminal, the district attorney’s office said. But still, his actions “may have been contrary” to county policy by using his position to influence a decision in which he had a financial stake, the D.A.’s office said.

Lowry said Wednesday that he did nothing wrong in pursuing a possible landfill site outside of the Fallbrook planning area.

“That’s ludicrous, and the district attorney should be ashamed of himself for what he’s done,” Lowry said. “Are they saying I’ve voted against an industrial development in Fallbrook because it increases my chances of building on land I own in Temecula? Where do you draw the line?”

Lowry said he voted on the landfill issue only after being assured by county officials that he wouldn’t be in conflict. “The conflict of interest only occurs in an area where you are elected, end of discussion,” he said.

The report said Waste Management also tried to intimidate El Cajon City Councilman Mark Lewis after he recommended last year that the city give Waste Management subsidiary Universal Refuse a five-year notice that its contract would be terminated so the city could seek competitive bids for its refuse collection.

The City Council agreed to do just that, and later, according to Lewis, he was confronted in a City Hall restroom by two Waste Management employees. According to Lewis, one of them remarked, “How come you don’t like Universal no more? . . . You know, you might not have a job tomorrow.”

At another time, a county waste management official for whom Lewis works said he was told by a Waste Management consultant that the trash company “was talking seriously about pursuing a conflict of interest case” against Lewis because he was voting on trash issues on the one hand, while working for the county’s waste management office, on the other.

“The circumstances and timing of these occurrences clearly support the implication that representatives of the company were attempting to intimidate Lewis,” the report said.

Waste Management “appears to also have been involved with efforts to manipulate the local media by using intermediaries,” the report stated.

It noted that the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based think tank that studies property rights and privatization issues, in 1990 sought a $34,000 contract with Waste Management to research and report on privately owned-and-operated landfills. The contract was never signed, officials for both organizations said Wednesday.

Two months ago, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a commentary by the Reason Foundation, promoting the advantages of a privately operated landfill at Gregory Canyon and making specific reference to Waste Management, according to the report.

Foundation spokesman Greg Brooks said that, even though the organization received a $1,000 donation from Waste Management in January, a month before the landfill article was published, “it was unrelated to any articles we were doing.”

The commentary, he said “was prompted by ongoing solid-waste management issues and an opportunity for the Reason Foundation to give its opinion, which we’re in the business of doing.”

The company is so large that it seems impervious to fines and other sanctions for environmental and antitrust violations that it has been assessed over the years, including fines of about $4 million in connection with its chemical and hazardous waste dump at Kettleman Hills in San Joaquin County, the report said.

The report said Waste Management has been fined tens of millions of dollars over the years in fines, penalties and out-of-court settlements related to alleged violations of environmental laws at its dump sites, and expressed concern that, if the company were allowed to operate a landfill here, the county might be held liable for environmental damage done locally by Waste Management.