Wahlco Environmental Chairman Steps Down

In the wake of a string of annual losses that topped $101 million, Wahlco Environmental Systems Inc. said Monday that longtime chairman, president and chief executive Henry N. Huta has resigned.

Mark Plaumann, an officer of the Connecticut-based investment firm that bought 81% of Wahlco’s stock a year ago, becomes president and chief executive of the maker of pollution control equipment.

A Wahlco spokeswoman declined to link Huta’s departure to Wahlco’s losses or to the year-ago change in control, saying only that the 48-year-old executive left to pursue other opportunities.

Wexford Capital Corp. which bought controlling interest in Wahlco last June 7, replaced all of the directors except Huta as part of that deal.

One of the new directors, David R. A. Steadman, president of Atlantic Management Associates Inc. in New Hampshire, has been appointed Wahlco’s chairman.

Wexford “clearly will be studying the business and be making some judgments” about Wahlco’s future, company spokeswoman Anne Anderson said. “But we don’t know what they’ll be doing at this time.”

Huta, whose resignation was effective Monday, could not be reached for comment.

Wahlco, which began as a unit of San Diego-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co., was taken public by the utility’s holding company in 1990.

Wahlco lost $101.2 million from 1992 through last year, including $66.1 million in 1994. For its first quarter this year, the company reported an $810,000 loss.

In the past, Huta has blamed Wahlco’s mounting losses on delays by U.S. industrial companies in purchasing the kinds of pollution control equipment Wahlco makes.

Wahlco shares were unchanged at $1 Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock once sold as high as $16.625, but has been trading in the $1-to-$3 range since mid-1994.

Wahlco spokeswoman Anne Anderson said Plaumann has not said whether he will relocate from Greenwich, Conn., to Wahlco’s corporate offices in Santa Ana.

Wahlco makes equipment to improve the efficiency of power plants; to reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants and to purify and bottle water. It has 450 employees, including 85 at its headquarters in Orange County, 100 at a factory in Lewiston, Maine, and 250 at a factory in England.