SUN VALLEY : Company’s Owner Held in Alleged Cyanide Dumping

The co-owner of a Sun Valley metal plating firm was being held in lieu of $555,000 bail Tuesday on felony charges that his company dumped potentially lethal amounts of cyanide and heavy metals into the Los Angeles sewer system.

Jack Meltzer, 53, whose company, Quality Processing Inc., has contracts with large aerospace firms, faces 17 counts involving the discharge of waste from an illegal pipe connected directly to the sewer system, head Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Delaney said.

“This is a very serious case, in part because there was such a serious threat to the public,” Delaney said.

The alleged discharge of high levels of cyanide, in particular, could have caused an explosion or a cloud of vapors that would have threatened employees of nearby businesses and residents of a trailer park, authorities said.

Meltzer, who owns the company with his wife, became a suspect earlier this summer after city sanitation workers performing routine sewer monitoring found “extremely dangerous and hazardous levels of untreated cyanide and toxic levels of chrome and zinc solutions” in the sewer system near the company, said Delaney, who is prosecuting the case.

Eleven of the charges are felonies, each of which carries a minimum three-year prison sentence and $25,000 fine, authorities said. Meltzer is scheduled to be arraigned Friday.