Belmont Probe Missed a Key Document

A key document that suggests the innocence of a firm accused by Los Angeles school officials of violating environmental laws was missing from the district auditor’s report on the Belmont Learning Complex, The Times has learned.

School district investigators have recommended prosecution of the firm, El Capitan Environmental Services Inc., alleging it broke the law when it shipped dirt contaminated by two underground tanks to a landfill without first testing it for a wide range of hazardous substances.

But El Capitan last week produced a laboratory analysis indicating there were no toxic chemicals in the tanks. It was faxed to the firm by the school district on the day the tanks were removed from the Belmont construction site.

The missing evidence, which appears to exonerate El Capitan, illustrates the difficulties encountered by investigators in getting school officials to cooperate with their inquiry into what went wrong at Belmont. It also raises the question of whether other incriminating or exculpatory evidence may be missing.

“How they [the auditors] can maintain the integrity of the report, that is the question,” said El Capitan’s Al Maurad. “Obviously it was faxed to me and I knew about it. It’s something they should know about. Why don’t they know about it? I don’t think that should give them the right to assume that we didn’t have it.”

An attorney for El Capitan has asked the district to retract the accusations, saying the company has lost business as a result of harm to its reputation.

Both a district official and an outside contractor who were asked to open their files to the investigation had copies of the analysis. It remains unclear whether they failed to turn the document over or whether investigators missed it in the volumes of paper they sifted through.

It was not included in the 6,000 pages of supporting evidence released last month with a report naming several district officials and outside consultants as responsible for environmental problems at the $200-million high school project.

The author of the report, chief auditor Don Mullinax, declined to comment on the advice of attorneys for the district’s internal audit and special investigations unit.

In the report, Mullinax named El Capitan as one of five consultants the district should sue for breach of professional responsibility. He included his findings on the company in referrals to four prosecuting agencies for consideration of civil or criminal charges.

Unlike the other firms named--the Belmont project’s architect, developer, legal counsel and environmental consultant--El Capitan played only a minor role in the Belmont saga.

According to the Mullinax report, the firm properly disposed of the contents of the two 500-gallon tanks as toxic material, but sent contaminated soil from around the tanks to a landfill that was not certified to receive toxic materials.

The Belmont investigators concluded that there was a likelihood the soil contained regulated substances because of the presence of paint and solvents at two automotive shops on the Belmont site near 1st Street and Beaudry Avenue. The report hypothesized that the shop owners might have discarded those toxic materials into the two tanks to avoid the cost of proper disposal.

Maurad said that the investigators never asked whether the company had conducted tests on the two tanks and that it didn’t occur to him that the document was needed. He said he turned over all his files to auditors. The analysis document, he said, was not among the papers.

The document, ironically, was in the hands of the FBI. In an unrelated investigation, federal agents had seized many of El Capitan’s files shortly after the firm completed the tank removal at Belmont.

The FBI probe focused on allegations that an employee of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board was holding up approvals on environmental work so that three businesses, including El Capitan, could continue to work on the projects. The company’s attorney, Michael Francis, said El Capitan was not under suspicion and no charges were filed against it.

Maurad said he did not believe his firm was a target in the Belmont investigation either, and asked the FBI to return the documents only after seeing the company’s name in newspaper articles on the Mullinax report.

Maurad said he suspects that district officials may have harbored ill will against him because of his unsuccessful efforts to obtain more work on the Belmont project.

He said he repeatedly sought a contract to remove contaminated soil from the site, but that his suggestions were “brushed aside.”

At one point, The Times has learned, the district’s environmental safety team directed Maurad’s partner, Harry Boyajian, to tip off Mullinax investigators about the possible mishandling of contaminated soil at the site. Boyajian, in turn, reported that workers involved in grading on the project were wearing respirators, a possible sign that they were bulldozing contaminated soil.

Mullinax has declined to say how the firm came under suspicion.

Records show that district environmental officer Richard Lui retained El Capitan in October 1997 when the tanks were unexpectedly uncovered during grading.

On Oct. 13, 1997, the day El Capitan removed the two tanks, Lui faxed the firm an analytical report of a sample processed by another consultant, Ecology Control Industries. A handwritten note on the cover sheet said: “For today’s pullout.”

The report indicated that the sample was diesel fuel and contained no heavy metals or chemical solvents. Diesel is not regulated as a hazardous substance.

The analytical report does not specify that the sample came from the tanks, and Maurad does not have a related document, called a chain of custody, that would show where the sample was taken.

An Ecology Control employee confirmed that the company has that document showing where the sample was taken, but declined to disclose it to The Times, saying he can release information only to his client, the school district.

Neither Lui nor Ecology Control President Ron Flury returned calls from The Times.

The Mullinax report named Lui as one of nine district officials at fault for the problems at Belmont and recommended that he receive discipline, possibly including termination.

The report also singled Lui out for “failing to provide boxes of additional documents and prohibiting the internal auditor’s team access to [his] documents.”

El Capitan’s attorney said the Mullinax report contained several inaccuracies in its account of the tank removal.

Francis questioned, for example, any connection between the tanks and two automotive shops, which the Mullinax report described as “located on the subject property [of the tanks].”

The tanks were 200 feet from the shops and had been used to store home heating oil, not industrial products, Francis said.