Asbestos Dumper Sentenced to 9 Months in Jail : Hazardous waste: Judge also orders 3 years of probation and a $20,000 fine. A co-defendant awaits trial on similar charges.

A Garden Grove businessman who pleaded guilty to illegally transporting and disposing of more than four tons of asbestos in the nation’s largest asbestos dumping case was sentenced Friday to nine months in Orange County Jail.

Superior Court Judge John M. Watson also sentenced Henry W. Sprague III, 46, to three years of probation and ordered that he and his business, Olympic Asphalt in Garden Grove, pay $20,000 in penalties. Before serving his sentence, Sprague will have until July 7 to apply for the county’s work-furlough program.

Had he gone to trial and been convicted, Sprague would have faced up to four years and four months in state prison.

In February, Sprague pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful dumping of hazardous materials and one count of unlawful transportation of hazardous materials. His co-defendant, Paul A. Garner, 53, of Hemet, was also charged with similar counts. Garner’s trial is pending.

In arguing against a prison sentence, Sprague’s attorney, Paul S. Meyer, told Watson on Friday that his client suffers a mental disorder that dates back to his days in the Navy, and that disability forces him to make wrong and reckless decisions at times.

Furthermore, Meyer argued, Sprague was considerate of public welfare, even as he was disposing the asbestos by dumping it at the Port of Long Beach, an area where the public does not have easy access.

“The material was double-bagged in plastic when it was left in a fairly isolated industrial parking lot and did not pose” imminent danger to people, Meyer said in an interview Friday.

In contrast, Deputy Dist. Atty. Gerald G. Johnston, who prosecuted the case, told Watson that Sprague had no concern for public health and safety, and that was why he illegally dumped the hazardous material.

Deputy Probation Officer Louise D. Hoffman concurred with Johnston, but recommended in her evaluation report to the judge that the defendant be sentenced to nine to 12 months in jail in addition to probation instead of state prison.

“To think that 100,000 to 200,000 people could have been adversely affected under the right weather conditions is truly frightening,” Hoffman stated in her probation report. “Giving him (only) probation . . . would, indeed, send a message to the world that this type of activity will be tolerated to some degree.”

According to court documents, Sprague’s company dumped four tons of nearly concentrated asbestos, packaged in several hundred bags, at the port last June 13--several hours after he told Garden Grove Fire Department investigators that he did not have the hazardous material on his property.

Authorities say the case is the largest instance of illegal dumping of asbestos prosecuted in the United States. Once commonly used as insulation for buildings and as a filler for asphalt, asbestos was found to cause cancer and is now strictly regulated by the federal government.

Court records show that Sprague’s father and stepmother told investigators that it was “common knowledge” that Sprague had kept large quantities of asbestos on his business property since 1989. He had told them on many occasions that it was too costly to legally dispose of the material, the elder Spragues told authorities.

According to court documents, the asbestos came from a road-paving business Sprague had once operated in Santa Ana. He mixed the asbestos with cement to make a road slurry, but the practice was eventually outlawed. After he sold the business, Sprague stored the asbestos on his property in Garden Grove.

JoAnn Sprague told fire officials that when her stepson’s employees voiced their concerns about the dangerous carcinogen, he said he was going to dump the asbestos somewhere just to “get rid of it,” according to documents.

Early last June, fire officials received an anonymous tip about the planned dumping.

Investigators went to Olympic Asphalt where Sprague denied having asbestos on his property. Soon after they left, court records show, Sprague and Garner loaded a pickup truck with hundreds of bags of asbestos and dumped them off at the port.

Both men were arrested Oct. 1 by Garden Grove police.