Busy anniversary week
for SCWW explosion with
warrants, guilty pleas
November 25, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
It was a busy week for the anniversary of the November 18, 2014 explosions and fires at Santa Clara Waste Water Co. – Green Compass Environmental Solutions, with wide media coverage, new search warrants showing the emergence of two confidential informants including one that told investigators he/she feared for their safety. Additional citations were issued for undisclosed hazardous materials and surprise guilty pleas to partial charges on the part of two defendants capped the one-year anniversary of the blast that not only rocked the waste facility but also the system of oversight of such processing plants.
According to the latest warrants, chemicals found at the site earlier this month could cause “severe burns” and should be restricted to professional users with corrosive-resistant protective equipment.
The chemicals were stored in mostly unmarked totes in a metal Connex type trailer, materials according to DA Investigator Jeff Barry that had not been inventoried after the initial incident even by the companies retained by SCWW for the cleanup and site testing.
Barry wrote in the search warrant that the chemicals found inside the storage container are caustic and “can create strong heat reactions” when mixed with incompatible acids. The affidavit notes SCWW officials have not submitted any new chemical inventory to the state Environmental Reporting System since April 22.
When the warrant was served at SCWW there was a cadre of local, state and federal officials including environmental health and protection, fire hazardous materials teams, fire departments, the state department of Toxic Substance Control, United States EPA and Department of Transportation-Office of Inspector General, among others. A witness said an ambulance was on standby during the warrant search that included a site cleanup of dirt near the trailer where several totes had reportedly leaked.
Two confidential informants, defendants in the SCWW case, told Barry about the totes and their shunned efforts to report them as required.
One, Barry wrote, “During the interview” expressed “concern for his/her safety if his/her identify is made public for providing information to law enforcement.”
Other instances of criminal activity were also raised during the interviews including knowingly dumping polymer — which has the potential of releasing highly toxic hydrochloric acid gas when broken down — into mulch before taking it to a local landfill.
All the defendants, who have not yet entered pleas were released on $20,000 bail each and were due in court December 1.
But two SCWW officials pleaded guilty Friday, November 20 to several charges related to the 2014 chemical explosion: Managers Mark Avila of Fillmore and Brock Gustin Baker, a resident of Carpinteria, pled guilty to knowing failure to warn of serious concealed danger, a felony; interference with enforcement, a misdemeanor; and two misdemeanors related to storage of hazardous substances and repeated failures to communicate with employees about hazardous substances.
Avila and Baker were initially accused of dozens of other felony and misdemeanor counts related to the explosion. It is expected the other offenses will be dismissed at sentencing June 1.
Avila and Baker face a maximum of three years in county jail or home confinement on the charges.
It was on November 18, 2014 about 3:45 a.m. that a hissing was heard followed by a blue flame coming from the rear of a vacuum truck that exploded, sending about 1,000 gallons of a toxic chemical mixture hundreds of feet throughout the facility.
Three Santa Paula Firefighters and employees of SCWW were seriously injured; the firefighters have not yet returned to work. Other Santa Paula employees involved in the incident — including a city mechanic that inspected the fire engine that had been engulfed in a fireball of exploding chemicals while personnel were in the cab — have also become ill.
First responders to the facility on Mission Rock Road in the county area were assured again and again that the foot-deep pool of waste, later referred to by a county official as “toxic goo,” was safe.
Within hours an evacuation had been ordered, a toxic cloud exploded, Highway 126 was closed, medical personnel treating those exposed to the incident themselves became ill and a nearby grower later had to report a $1-million-plus crop loss.
More than 50 people were treated for symptoms of exposure and an RV camp of local, state and federal officials set up an Emergency Operations Command Post in the Kmart parking lot that stayed for weeks.
The toxic fire was still smoldering when the District Attorney’s Office launched an investigation; less than a week later a warrant was served at city owned property leased to SCWW where illegally stored chemicals and other material was found.
In August the companies and nine administrators and employees were indicted by a grand jury on 71 counts of various criminal offenses related to the explosion that resulted according to DA investigation from mixing sodium chlorite with organic materials, a volatile combination in the vacuum truck.
The incident was not a huge surprise to at least one neighbor of SCWW who had been notifying the county’s Planning Department for more than a year that the facility had a high rate of night traffic — suspected to be loads of fracking wastes containing materials with high radioactivity sent by pipeline to the City of Oxnard wastewater treatment plant for processing — as well as strong odors that often smelled like chemicals. Closely on the heels of the explosion Oxnard later shut off SCWW, where an executive is accused of falsifying test reports to hide high levels of radiation.
Attorneys for the defendants have characterized the November 18, 2014 explosions and fires as an industrial accident.
The SCWW-Green Compass defendants are facing various misdemeanor and felony criminal offenses, including conspiracy to commit a crime, illegal disposal of hazardous waste, recklessly handling hazardous waste, known failure to warn of serious concealed danger and causing impairment to an employee’s body.
