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2/26/2025
WT Staff
 Knowledge of an environmental crime? Give us a call at 877-52-WATER (877-529-2837), or email info@watertoday.ca
February 26, 2025 10 am PST
CWA CrimeBox
Environmental Crimes Historic Conviction: Fiscal Year 2017; Case ID# CR_2989(California)
Fraud AND illegal dumping - wastewater hauler dumps clients' toxics into US waters in southern California
One of 72 Clean Water Act Criminal Prosecutions in the State of California (from 1989-2023)
The defendant in this case is a California waste management company and its owner-operator convicted of taking clients' money to haul their waste materials in compliance with environmental law. The defendant took the money, and the responsibility for environmental compliance. This did not turn out well for the customers de-frauded, the municipality with the task of response and clean-up, for the Santa Ana watershed or for the defendant, sporting a criminal record.
Industrial and commercial clients contracted the defendant to carry out their responsibility for legal wastewater disposal. It is not permitted for polluters to dump contaminated wastewater of unknown characteristics. There is no permit to dump unknown quality water to the environment, or to the municipal treatment works. Wastewater producers may use a pre-treatment process in their own facility to remove excess contaminants prior to disposal in the sanitary sewer system. Alternatively, the industrial wastewater generator will contract an environmental service company, such as a wastewater hauler to pick up and transport the material to a specialized treatment facility equipped to handle it.
In this case, 17 law-abiding corporate citizens contracted for the lawful handling and disposal of their process wastewater streams, only to learn that they had been ripped off. The defendant collected $350,000 to perform the compliance duties, then proceeded to dump tens of thousands of gallons of contaminated water into a creek in remote Riverside County. The receiving water body in this case was Los Coyotes Creek, a tributary of one of the most important waterways in south California, the San Gabriel River. Had it been the intent of the defendant's defrauded clients to flout environmental protections of the Clean Water Act, they could have kept their bucks and simply flushed the wastewater directly to the City of Santa Fe treatment works and had their own stories featured in CrimeBox. As it turns out, this defendant took the money and the spotlight.
The San Gabriel River drains 689 square miles of the Santa Ana watershed Region 8, winding 59 miles from its headwaters in the San Gabriel Mountains of Los Angeles and west San Bernardino Counties, through desert in Riverside County and the densely populated Orange County, including popular recreation site El Dorado Park in Long Beach. The river exits the continent into the Pacific Ocean at Alamitos Bay, between Long Beach and Seal Beach. From the location of the illegal dumping in remote Riverside County near the top of the drainage basin, the majority of the river was clouded with this crime.
This was a repeat offense for the defendant, prior indictments for water pollution, mail and wire fraud, witness tampering, destruction of evidence and identity theft among the felonies committed.
United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker made the following statement to the public following sentencing in federal District Court:
"Water is a resource that we cannot afford to waste or pollute in drought-stricken Southern California,” said . “This defendant’s crime caused significant harm to the public, taxpayers and the environment."
The defendant was sentenced to a period of probation for the Clean Water Act violation while City of Santa Fe Springs incurred three quarters of a million dollars for the clean up. The case was investigated by the City of Santa Fe Springs Fire Department, the City of Santa Fe Springs Police Department, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency – Criminal Investigations Division.
Probation: 60 months
See last week's CrimeBox here, "Porta-potties emptied in Camp Pendleton ravine, vac truck driver sentenced "
CWA CrimeBox briefs are compiled from EPA Criminal Enforcement records.
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