Ousted Worm Concern Founder Finds Himself Back Where He Started : Business: Richard Morhar lost control of his quirky operation after selling the successful firm to investors, but he says he’s not bitter.

After all the work and toil, Richard Morhar is right back where he started--in the same ramshackle house where he launched his quirky business founded on worms 20 years ago.

*

What he has left of The Worm Concern, which grossed nearly $1 million last year, are two old beat-up bins of compost loaded with hundreds of busy worms.

“Sometimes when I think about it I get angry,” he said without a hint of anger. “But I’m not bitter about it.”

Everyone agrees that Morhar had a good idea. His worms would eat the “green waste” that cities so desperately need to dispose, and then convert it to a rich fertilizer that is sold for premium prices.

But the 49-year-old former accountant crossed both county bureaucrats and his affluent new neighbors on Tierra Rejada Road by moving his back-yard business to a lot near Simi Valley. And in the end, after he had sold 80% of his business to investors, he was forced out as company president.

As he walked inside his Thousand Oaks home, watched by languid cats, Morhar said he regrets losing control of The Worm Concern. He and his son are still part-owners, but no longer have control.

“I’m not really sure how that happened,” Morhar said.

But son Tim Morhar, 25, who was one of the five family members who worked in the business, is now out of work and angry.

“All the years we put into that,” he said. “I quit school and put in a lot of 60- and 70-hour weeks.”

*

The business started in 1975 as a hobby for the affable senior Morhar, who resembles a lanky John Denver.

But after the first couple of years, Morhar found a business niche. He started supplying organic gardeners high-quality soil from the nutrient-rich material excreted by his worms.

Then he began accepting yard trimmings that were ground down by machine, digested by his voracious, slimy worms and turned into the dark and fertile “castings.”

His home-grown business just kept growing. His timing was almost too perfect.

Just as cities across California were frantically searching for ways to deal with a strict state law forcing a cut in waste sent to landfills, his business gave them an ecologically sound solution. As much as 30% of residential trash comes from lawn and garden clippings.

As the idea caught on, Morhar’s business burst the confines of his back yard. And in 1991 he moved to a 16-acre site below the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. His business was doubling in size every month, he said. And the future appeared even brighter.

*

The city of Simi Valley began hauling its green waste to Morhar’s lot last year. Moorpark and Thousand Oaks were said to be close behind.

Morhar made money coming and going. Customers paid to dump, and then for the fertile by-product. The Worm Concern charged $13 for each ton delivered, and it was accepting about 100 tons per day.

But in 1994 as the business approached $1 million in gross income, two local trash haulers saw the potential and bought into the business. The future could not have looked brighter. And until the eve of his December resignation, Morhar did not see that he was outnumbered.

Now, almost a month after he was forced out, Morhar says he understands that perhaps he was naive about the seriousness of the situation.

“Sure, there were things we could have done differently,” he said. “We made some mistakes, but this kind of thing hadn’t been really tried before.”

He faults bureaucrats for his downfall. But county environmental health and waste disposal officers see things differently.

The first problem, the one that ultimately shut him down, was that Morhar never got a county permit to operate his business. He said he did not need the same type of waste-disposal permit required of landfills and insisted his worms were a type of farming.

*

County officials eventually agreed, at least temporarily, that the operation was different and important. But that only postponed the inevitable, since neighbors’ complaints about dust, noise and odor had begun to pile up on desks at the County Government Center.

The bucolic Tierra Rejada Valley is dotted with ranch-style homes and riding stables. And a lot of the people who live there felt ambushed when the bustling business suddenly appeared next to them.

“I don’t really blame them that much,” Morhar said. “I mean for all those years they had this nice field to look at, and then we showed up. I don’t think it really mattered what we would have done. They just wanted us gone.”

For the neighbors, it was more than just appearances. They complained about the noise from the big rigs that moved the material around the site. They complained about dust being kicked up and drifting into their homes, and they complained about the smell.

Eventually, Jim Hagman, owner of the Elvenstar Farm and Riding School, hired prominent attorney Glenn Reiser to get rid of the operation.

Hagman thought Morhar had a good idea, but he was fed up with having the operation at his back door.

Last summer, in the middle of a hotly contested race for county supervisor, Hagman hired a political consultant to help him. The Worm Concern became a political issue. Candidate Scott Montgomery tried to negotiate a compromise, but failed.

And county environmental officials kept pushing the company to go through a permit process.

In December, the county ordered The Worm Concern to stop accepting green waste. It was ordered closed altogether by the end of 1994.

*

Morhar hired his own attorney, and was ready to fight back. But investors were not. They said he should not remain as company president, Morhar said, so he resigned.

“I guess it was mutual,” he said. “They wanted to go in another direction.”

The principal partners now plan to relocate, scale back operations and continue to sell worm fertilizer after they get a county permit.

What comes next for Morhar?

He plans to return to accounting, and after tax season perhaps go back into the green waste business as a consultant.

“It’s not over for me,” he said. “I learned a lot and I still have connections in the industry.”