Water Agency’s Offices Searched

Federal agents, armed with search warrants, swept through the Monterey Park headquarters of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board on Wednesday as part of an investigation into allegations that a cleanup supervisor may have used his authority for personal gain, according to federal and state sources.

A team of more than 30 agents from the FBI and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency searched the supervisor’s state office, his Los Angeles home, and the Glendale offices of three environmental consulting firms, the sources said.

The investigation centers on Hank Yacoub, who has been a supervisor for the water board’s troubled underground storage tank cleanup program, according to the search warrant served at the water board.

Sources familiar with the investigation say federal authorities are pursuing allegations that Yacoub kept cases open at polluted sites even after spills were cleaned up in order to direct business to private consulting and cleanup firms.

Yacoub could not be reached for comment Wednesday. He has not been charged and sources caution that the investigation is still continuing.

The search warrant served to the water board specifically covers Yacoub’s second-floor office at the agency headquarters. It asks for all his official records as well as any documents “relating to the personal business and financial relationships” between Yacoub and individuals associated with three Glendale-based environmental firms: El Capitan Environmental Services, Redwood Environmental Laboratory and Geoquest Geotechnical Engineering Inc. The warrant also covers records from six other environmental firms, all involved in cleanup and monitoring of toxic contamination under the jurisdiction of the water board from 1992 to the present.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Board, one of nine such agencies statewide, is responsible for protecting the water supplies of 10 million Southern Californians in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

In recent years, the board has been the target of audits by state and federal agencies that found that the regional regulators failed to take action on leaking underground fuel tanks--in some cases delaying action for as long as 12 years.

Owners of contaminated sites had complained that no matter how hard they tried or how much money they poured into cleanups, they could never get the regional board to declare their property clean.

In 1996, federal and state authorities began to hear that a few of the regional board’s 125 staff members may have profited by steering business to private contractors who benefited from the protracted cleanups.

The State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento interceded by sending a team of auditors to review cleanup records. The result was a confidential report, which complained of lax supervision and employees who “do not produce because they are not expected to produce.”

An official with the state board was reassigned to the regional agency and, within months, he and his staff declared that a third of the approximately 2,500 leaking underground tank sites were cleaned up. Several staff members were disciplined or reassigned. And in the middle of efforts to reorganize the regional board, its chief executive officer resigned.