O.C. Sanitation Districts’ Woes Worry Directors : Litigation: The agency, which is facing additional legal problems, has spent $4.2 million in attorney’s fees and related expenses in the past five years.

The Orange County Sanitation Districts, now facing wrongful death claims following a fatal fire at one of their plants and a certain legal fight over treatment of an agency whistle-blower, have spent $4.2 million in attorney’s fees and related expenses in the past five years.

The fees and potential for additional litigation have startled some agency directors, who said the legal costs will be studied as part of an overall audit of the districts’ management practices.

“I’ve seen the same figures, and I’m very surprised at the amount we are paying in attorney’s fees,” said Irvine Councilman Barry J. Hammond, one of the agency’s 46 directors. “There has to be an attitude of willing to solve problems and disputes without going to court, a use of common sense. I’m very concerned.”

In a short statement issued Thursday through the sanitation agency, General Manager J. Wayne Sylvester acknowledged that the agency has devoted considerable resources to defend itself against lawsuits but expressed confidence in legal counsel Rourke, Woodruff and Spradlin, a private firm based in Orange.

“It is unfortunate that we have been drawn into several extraordinary legal matters in the past few years that were not of our doing,” Sylvester said. “We believe that our legal interests have been well represented.”

Sylvester and other top administrators have declined to comment about the agency’s most recent legal problems.

The sanitation agency provides sewer services in cities throughout the county and is split into various jurisdictions. The cities and jurisdictions are represented by the districts’ directors.

Some of the agency’s directors said they are increasingly concerned about its recent problems.

Part of their focus has been on the serious nature of safety code violations issued last week against the agency by state authorities. The violations were related to the fire that killed two workers at the districts’ Huntington Beach treatment plant. Earlier this week, the families of the two workers notified the agency of their intentions to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the districts.

Other board members have expressed outrage over the agency’s treatment of laboratory manager Louis Sangermano. After acknowledging that he was cooperating with the Orange County district attorney’s investigation of activities within the sanitation districts, Sangermano learned the next day that laboratory locks were changed and that his office telephone number had been recoded. Sangermano’s attorneys have also notified the agency that they will challenge the recent actions.

“My sense is that the recent problems in the districts have been staggering,” said Huntington Beach Mayor Linda Moulton-Patterson, another sanitation agency director whose city has been notified it will be a defendant in the wrongful death lawsuit.

“A lot of the directors are concerned,” she said. “I want some answers.”

Moulton-Patterson characterized the agency’s legal costs as “exceedingly high” and said she planned to ask agency administrators for a breakdown of those fees and expenses.

Since 1984, the agency has been involved, either as a defendant or plaintiff, in more than 80 lawsuits, with some of the most costly cases coming within the past five years, according to officials and agency records.

In one of the nation’s largest offshore chemical contamination cases, the federal government sued the Orange County Sanitation Districts and more than 100 other cities and special districts in 1990.

The case centered on the dumping of industrial chemicals and the pesticide DDT into coastal waters from Southern California sewer systems. Less than two years ago, the cities and special districts agreed to settle the case by spending $43 million to clean up the waters. The sanitation agency’s share of that cost was more than $300,000.

Spokeswoman Corinne Clawson said the agency recently settled a lawsuit it filed against a contractor over defective engines installed for its Central Power Generation System. The agency prevailed in the case, but the settlement required that it pay its own legal fees, which totaled more than $400,000.