Poison Dumping Alleged at Firm

Two managers of a circuit-board maker with a history of covertly dumping hazardous waste have been charged with putting copper and acid into a sewer system in Santa Ana, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

Nandell Patel, 38, of Cerritos and Vijay Merchant, 53, of Mission Viejo were charged Thursday with 11 felony counts of dumping hazardous waste into a sewer. Patel was arrested Monday and held at Orange County Jail on $50,000 bail, officials said. Merchant has agreed to surrender within the next few days, said Nick Thompson, a deputy district attorney in the D.A.’s environmental protection unit.

If convicted, the two men could get prison sentences of 9 1/2 years and pay $1.1 million in fines.

Merchant is president of Golden West Circuits in Santa Ana. Patel is responsible for the processing and handling of waste for the company. The two are charged with releasing an unknown amount of copper and acid waste, deadly materials that can eat away at pipes, kill microorganisms that feed on raw sewage and pose a hazard to maintenance workers, investigators said.

A May 10 search warrant found that waste was being pumped into a toilet on company premises. The waste water in the sewer is treated at a sanitation district plant before being pumped into the ocean four miles offshore.

“It’s very serious because it appears that the conduct is very calculated, not a simple one-time accident,” Thompson said. “It’s intentional and deliberate. It’s extremely serious, given the current problems we have with our beach closures, with sewer systems that are failing, and given that the sewer piping in Santa Ana is very, very old.”

Attempts Monday to reach Patel, Patel’s attorney and Merchant for comment were unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone at Golden West Circuits said she was not allowed to give out information.

An attorney for Merchant, Monte Reynolds, said, “I can tell you, based on the information I have, that the allegations are not well-founded. But we’ll have to see what the basis of the D.A.’s charges are.”

The investigation was conducted jointly by the district attorney’s office, Orange County Sanitation District and the Orange County Health Care Agency.

Earlier Fine for Heavy Metals, Cyanide

Three years ago, the sanitation district fined the two men $15,000 for dumping heavy metals and cyanide into the sewer system when they operated the same business in Huntington Beach. Six months ago, Golden West Circuits moved to Santa Ana without notifying a sanitation district investigator who had been monitoring its operations. That caught officials’ attention, and the sanitation district in January started sampling waste water downstream of the business. After finding evidence of illegal dumping, the district contacted the district attorney’s office in February.

Lisa Lawson, spokeswoman for the sanitation district, said the release of pollutants did not cause any major damage. But “if we let all the little discharges go, suddenly it’s compounded. If it had gone on for a long time, it would have affected our collection system by wearing away the pipes. Also, heavy metals being released into the ocean is not something that meets our [permit] requirements.”

Thompson said there are about 200 similar businesses in Orange County, and most handle such waste by evaporating much of the liquid content, allowing it to dry, then having it taken to a hazardous waste facility.

“I believe Golden West Circuits did this as a cost-saving measure because proper disposal is expensive,” he said. Violations are also unfair to other companies, “most of which are honest businesses that play by the rules and spend a lot of money to try to protect our environment.”

Thompson said he has filed only one similar case this year. Earlier this month, the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board proposed fining circuit-board maker Dynamic Detail Inc. of Anaheim $12,750 for improperly storing hazardous waste and sending an unknown amount of copper, zinc and lead into a storm drain.