Waste Handler Charged in Trash Dumping Scheme

A Santa Clara County grand jury has charged Waste Management of California, a subsidiary of the nation’s largest trash company, with grand theft in a garbage-mixing scheme in which the company allegedly cheated a rival landfill operator and the city of San Jose out of at least $850,000 over six years.

The grand jury charged Waste Management of California, its Santa Clara County division and eight employees--including an executive currently working for the Illinois-based parent corporation--with dumping refuse collected from other cities in landfill space allocated to San Jose.

The grand jury’s eight-count indictment, handed down June 30 but released Wednesday, also charges that Waste Management cheated landfill operator Browning-Ferris Industries by mixing trash from several jurisdictions and dumping it under San Jose’s allocation to get the city’s discounted rate.

The result was that by September, 1991, when police raided Waste Management’s Santa Clara County offices, the company was paying $15 a ton to dump rubbish in San Jose, instead of the usual rate of $28 a ton, city officials have said.

A Waste Management spokeswoman in Santa Clara said the company and its employees are not guilty.

“This is basically a dispute over the terms of a contract,” spokeswoman Barbara Zeitman Olsen said. “It’s a local dispute.”

Waste Management of California and its Santa Clara division pleaded not guilty in Superior Court on Wednesday. So did three employees, including John Slocum, 39, a finance executive with Waste Management of North America in Oakbrook, Ill. Other pleas are expected later.

The indictments follow a series of controversies in Southern California surrounding Waste Management and its subsidiaries.

Last month, a Waste Management subsidiary settled a dispute with Mission Viejo by agreeing to forgo two guaranteed rate increases to offset what the city said was a 30% overestimation of garbage collection.

In a March report, San Diego Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller warned that public agencies should use “extreme caution” before dealing with Waste Management Inc. Miller scolded the company for what he said was a history of attempts to “gain undue influence over government officials.”

A 1991 Ventura County Sheriff’s Department survey found that the company had paid $52.3 million in fines nationwide during the 1980s. It listed 10 criminal, 22 civil environmental and 23 civil antitrust cases against the company--including several for price fixing.