FULLERTON : Man Sentenced in Toxic Dumping Case

The former president of an Anaheim environmental consulting firm was sentenced to 60 days in County Jail after he pleaded guilty to dumping toxic chemicals into a garbage bin, prosecutors said Thursday.

Joseph Zywczak, 52, pleaded guilty to one count of illegally dumping hazardous waste. He was originally charged with 29 other similar counts, Deputy Dist. Atty. Michelle Lyman said.

Prosecutors agreed to the plea agreement, she said, because it would have been difficult to convict him on all counts. “And even if I were successful,” she added, “there was no benefit to be gained because no judge would have sentenced him to more than the maximum” of three years.

Before his arrest, Zywczak had no criminal record. Therefore, any judge assigned to the case would likely hand him a relatively lenient sentence of about three years in state prison, Lyman said. “Maybe a little more, but not much,” she added.

Because of the plea agreement, Municipal Judge David T. McEachen also sentenced Zywczak to three years’ probation and ordered him to pay $47,000 in restitution to the agencies that cleaned up the waste.

Zywczak will began his jail term May 28, Lyman said.

Zywczak, president of ENV Inc., which since has shut down, was arrested last spring when a worker for Anaheim Disposal Co. was overcome by fumes in the company’s yard while unloading a bin.

They had picked it up from Zywczak’s company, prosecutors said.

Investigators determined that a container of hydrochloric acid in the bin had broken open.

Inside the trash bin, a hazardous materials team found 50 small containers of waste, including some 55-gallon drums of chemicals such as cyanide, hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid.