Dumped Chemicals Could Have Killed, Prosecutors Say

A former president of an environmental consulting firm is to be arraigned today on charges of illegally dumping dangerous chemicals into a garbage bin where they could have killed people in the vicinity if the substances had reacted.

Joseph Zywczak, 52, of Bellflower has been charged with 27 felony counts of illegal disposal and transport of hazardous materials, and willfully endangering the public with the risk of bodily injury. The criminal complaint filed by the Orange County district attorney alleges that Zywczak knowingly disposed of the materials in a reckless, illegal and dangerous manner.

The chemicals were discovered by Anaheim firefighters in April when they went to the assistance of garbage workers who had fallen ill from fumes. The trash men had hauled the dumpster from behind Zywczak’s defunct business, in a commercial area about 1 1/2 miles northeast of Disneyland, prosecutors say.

Inside the dumpster were pellets, bottles, buckets and drums of chemicals including cyanide, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid.

Although the volume of material wasn’t particularly large, the highly reactive and potentially lethal nature of the chemicals makes the case unusually serious, prosecutors say.

“When I talked to chemists about this, they were absolutely appalled. Any number of people could have died if they had combined,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Michelle Lyman, who said she is seeking a jail sentence for Zywczak.

Ironically, along with the chemicals inside the dumpster, investigators found copies of federal hazardous-waste laws outlining how the waste should have been legally disposed of, according to court records.

Zywczak, who denies any involvement with the dumping, will plead not guilty today, said his attorney, Charles Whisonant of Newport Beach.

The district attorney alleges that Zywczak threw the chemicals in the dumpster rented by his company, ENV Inc., also known as Environmental Services Division, as he shut down the business due to bankruptcy. The dumpster was behind the company’s office at 623 S. East St.

Chemists say that if either of the acids had mixed with the cyanide pellets, it would have created a cloud of cyanide gas, a gas-chamber chemical that spreads quickly and can rapidly result in death if inhaled. Also, if the hydrochloric acid had reacted with the sulfuric acid, it would have formed one of the most potent chemicals known, capable of melting metal and inflicting severe burns.

Whisonant said his client does not know if the chemicals belonged to his company. He said he could not respond to specific allegations because he had not yet reviewed the full court file.

“It looks like there’s some pretty serious charges, but we talked to Mr. Zywczak at length about this and it appears there is a significant misunderstanding about who did what to whom and when. Mr. Zywczak doesn’t know anything about hazardous materials, and if it was there, he wasn’t aware of it,” Whisonant said.

Zywczak, who was arrested and jailed last month, was released after posting $50,000 bail. His lawyer said he will ask for a continuance of the preliminary hearing to late January or early February.

Investigators found “in excess of 50 containers of waste” in the dumpster, including some 55-gallon drums, said Lyman, the prosecutor.

“He didn’t dispose of them in any way to make sure they didn’t break and combine,” Lyman said. “There was no protection for anyone who was loading the dumpster or transporting it.”

Prosecutors allege that Zywczak was aware of the risk because he had been trained in waste disposal as an owner of the environmental consulting company.

One of Zywczak’s business associates allegedly told investigators that “Joe knew the federal hazardous waste laws like the back of his hand,” according to the records filed by prosecutors.

But Whisonant said Zywczak is an accountant, not a technician or engineer. He said Zywczak was a co-owner of the company who became its president in the past year to work out its troubled finances after the business stopped operating.

“The technical guys either left the company or retired when it started to go into bankruptcy and they made Mr. Zywczak interim president,” he said. “It was not an operating company when he became president.”

Before its bankruptcy, the company collected and tested waste water for industries that discharge treated chemical waste into the county’s sewer system. The wastes found in the dumpster were the type frequently used by makers of circuit boards.

According to papers filed in court, Anaheim Disposal, a private waste hauler, called firefighters when workers became ill and were sent to a hospital after picking up a dumpster in an alley behind the former ENV Inc. office. The men had hauled the dumpster several miles to Anaheim Disposal and had begun to unload it when it started to give off fumes.

Court records indicate the dumpster was rented by ENV Inc., which had cleared out and closed its office several days earlier.

Investigators were unable to determine which chemical leaked and injured the workers, but they believe it wasn’t cyanide because that would have been fatal. The workers were treated at a local hospital. Prosecutors also don’t know if any of the chemicals leaked along the way while being transported to Anaheim Disposal Co.

According to the prosecution, Zywczak at first denied the charges, but then admitted to investigators that the chemicals belonged to his company and that he personally--not his employees--had thrown them out to avoid the cost of legal disposal.

Federal and state laws require hazardous waste to be carefully tracked and then disposed of in specially authorized landfills or other disposal sites. But the cost to business is great--sometimes thousands of dollars per drum--and some companies try to avoid the expense by disguising the waste in ordinary trash.