EPA Fines 5 Firms $750,000 in Toxics Case
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced fines of $750,000 against five firms accused of failing to treat industrial waste before discharging it to municipal sewage treatment plants in Burbank and Los Angeles.
Lockheed Corp. was socked with the largest penalty--$460,000--for violating the federal pre-treatment requirements.
EPA officials said Stainless Steel Products Inc. and Zero Corp. of Burbank agreed to pay $90,000 and $75,000, respectively, while Teledyne Industries Inc. of Los Angeles and Chevron U.S.A. Inc of El Segundo were fined $85,000 and $40,000.
The penalties are included in settlement agreements filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles that end a 3-year-old lawsuit against the firms.
The suit, filed on behalf of the EPA and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency, accused the firms of violating the federal Clean Water Act by failing to remove toxic metals and other industrial contaminants before discharging waste water to city sewer plants.
The plants were designed to handle domestic waste, and could be damaged by industrial waste or pass it, untreated, into the Los Angeles River or Santa Monica Bay, officials said.
“Settlements such as these send a strong message to the regulated community that it doesn’t pay to pollute our precious water resources,” said Robert P. Ghirelli, executive officer for the regional water board, in a prepared statement.
“This is a very old case involving alleged violations in the late 1980s at facilities no longer in operation,” said Lockheed spokesman Paul Haney, referring to the company’s Burbank manufacturing complex.
“Lockheed agreed to this out-of-court settlement with the government more than two years ago, without admitting liability, to avoid the cost of litigation,” Haney said.
An EPA official also said the companies agreed to the fines about two years ago, but that delays in filing the consent agreements resulted, among other things, from efforts to settle claims against a sixth firm--Crown Cork & Seal Co. of Van Nuys. Crown officials could not be reached for comment.
Greg Arthur, an environmental engineer at the EPA’s San Francisco regional office, said the lawsuit will continue against Crown and the cities of Burbank and Los Angeles, which were accused of failing to adequately enforce federal pre-treatment standards.
Arthur said Lockheed, Zero and Stainless Steel Products were found to have violated pre-treatment standards for metals. He said Teledyne exceeded standards for metals and cyanide, and Chevron for oil, grease and ammonia.
City sewage plants “are designed to handle human waste . . . so they don’t treat for metals and they don’t treat for cyanide, as examples,” Arthur said.
Such pollutants “can contaminate the sludge that those treatment plants make, they can cause those treatment plants themselves to fail to work, or they can just pass right through the treatment plant and end up in Santa Monica Bay or the Los Angeles River,” Arthur said.
