Brewery Charged With Negligence in 2nd Spill Into Van Nuys Creek

City prosecutors Thursday filed a criminal complaint against Anheuser-Busch Inc., charging it with negligence in a chemical spill last February that caused a small fish kill in the Sepulveda Basin wildlife area downstream from the company’s giant Van Nuys brewery.

The four misdemeanor counts together carry maximum penalties of $104,000, according to Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Donald Kass. Arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 24.

Earl Burke, manager of the brewery in the 15800 block of Roscoe Boulevard, said he had not seen the criminal complaint and did not “know a thing about it.”

The complaint is the second filed against the company in connection with the Feb. 23 and 24 spill of a caustic cleaning compound into Haskell Creek and a previous spill Jan. 27. In the other action, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board in June sought a $55,000 civil penalty for the two spills, in which about 11,400 gallons of a sodium hydroxide solution were discharged into the creek.

The regional water board complaint is scheduled for a hearing Monday in Los Angeles before the agency’s decision-making board. Different sections of state law are involved, and the company could be liable under both.

In Thursday’s action, the city attorney’s office accused Anheuser-Busch of violating the state’s fish and game, and health and safety codes. All four counts involved the February discharge, but Kass said the company’s failure to prevent a recurrence of the earlier spill was the core of the complaint.

Kass said the February spill happened, in part, because Anheuser-Busch failed to activate a pump that it had installed to prevent a recurrence. Also, Kass said, the second spill, involving 6,000 gallons, was not reported by Anheuser-Busch but was detected 24 hours after it began by city employees monitoring water quality in Sepulveda Basin.

At the time of the February spill, the company was at work on a permanent spill-prevention system, Kass said. “But my position is that you have to have satisfactory interim measures to prevent a spill, given that the material is highly caustic” and “presents a danger to humans as well as to fish and other wildlife.”

Burke said he wasn’t certain if the pump was turned on at the time of the February spill. But he acknowledged that city workers discovered the spill through high alkalinity readings in creek water drawn in the basin.

Officials blamed the second spill for the deaths of 11 fish and nine bullfrogs.

Near the brewery, Haskell Creek is a concrete-lined storm channel. But it becomes an earth-bottomed creek in Sepulveda Basin, 2 1/2 miles downstream, where discharges from the Tillman treatment plant join it. The creek flows through the basin’s 108-acre bird sanctuary and past its wildlife lake before emptying into the Los Angeles River.

Following both spills, cleanup crews hired by the firm sucked water from the creek and flushed clean water from the brewery to dilute the contamination.

Burke said the company so far has spent more than $500,000 on a permanent spill-control system.

Lawyers for the state and Anheuser-Busch have discussed a possible settlement of the water board complaint under which the brewery would pay for environmental enhancement of the wildlife area instead of, or in addition to, a penalty payment.