Drug Agents Raid Waste Firm Offices

Investigators from Arizona and the federal government raided the offices of a California waste company Tuesday after authorities said they uncovered evidence showing that the firm’s employees have been selling methamphetamine ingredients seized at drug labs to drug dealers.

Workers at Industrial Waste Utilization, a Montclair-based company that has a contract with California to dispose of hazardous chemicals found at clandestine methamphetamine labs, were illegally selling the chemicals to criminals, who were using them to make the drug, state and federal investigators said.

Investigators descended on the company’s offices in Phoenix and its Montclair corporate headquarters after authorities learned of the alleged illicit chemical sales during a broader investigation into interstate methamphetamine trafficking. They said the criminal activity appears to have taken place primarily in Arizona, where the waste company was supposed to be collecting the drug ingredients for safe disposal. Authorities said they have made at least 25 arrests there in connection with the raids.

“They were supposed to be taking it [to Phoenix] and disposing of it properly,” Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Mark Merchant said. “Instead, the allegation is that they were selling it out the back door, back to other meth labs.”

In addition to criminal drug charges, Merchant said the firm or its employees may be charged with environmental crimes for failing to properly dispose of the hazardous chemicals.

Industrial Waste Utilization representatives in Montclair declined to comment on the authorities’ allegations or the raids Tuesday. They said the company’s attorneys were preparing a statement, but it had not been released by Tuesday evening.

A team of more than a dozen government agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, took part in the raids, culminating months of investigative work. They made the 25 arrests in Arizona after targeting workers and suspected drug dealers there with 19 state search warrants and three federal search warrants. Investigators descended on an Arizona methamphetamine lab and several residences, as well as the company offices.

“Arizona is a safer place tonight than it was this morning,” Arizona Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard said in a statement, adding that the investigation had “prevented at least 500 pounds of meth from entering our neighborhoods.”

In addition, authorities executed 11 search warrants in Ohio, plus the one in Montclair, a community of 33,000 people in San Bernardino County. A spokesman for the California attorney general’s office said that agents with the state’s Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement assisted with the case, and will look into whether other charges should be brought against the company or its employees in California.

“The meth chemicals that wound up being sold out the back all came from California,” Arizona Assistant Atty. Gen. Richard Travis said. Authorities were not only targeting employees, but had indicted the company with furthering an illegal operation, he added.

According to a federal grand jury indictment, a group of drug smugglers had been obtaining chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine from workers at the company’s Phoenix office, where the chemicals were supposed to be taken to be destroyed.

The chemicals were used to make methamphetamine that was taken to Greeley, Colo., and Dayton, Ohio, and traded for marijuana.