THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160295
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 136 lines
It sounded so good rolling off the tongue of entrepreneur Howard S. Cruz. The flashy former football coach would build the first medical waste incinerator in the city. No problem. No mess.
His $10 million plan was approved by the city Planning Commission last summer with flying colors. It even winged its way past the scrutiny of the Navy, whose jets would fly over the proposed plant on their way to Oceana Naval Air Station.
He wowed environmentalists with talk of a sophisticated technology that would trap toxic byproducts in harmless little glass beads.
But mention Cruz and his incinerator to city officials these days and you'll probably get rolling eyes and some slightly embarrassed chuckles.
``He's a very charismatic person, I'll say that,'' said Mark Wawner, acting director of economic development for Virginia Beach. ``What's he up to these days?''
The city last heard from Cruz just weeks after the Planning Commission voted 8-2 in favor of his project nearly a year ago, at a June 8 hearing. At the time, commissioners described the incinerator as ``very, very unique'' and ``professional.''
Its downfall, however, began when Cruz declined to answer deeper questions from city finance officials about who was going to pay for the landmark business, advertised to burn up to 1,500 pounds an hour of bloody bandages, used syringes and other hospital waste.
Officials first got nervous about money when Cruz bounced a $628 check to the city that was intended to pay for permit application fees, according to records on file with the city.
Jerry Stewart, assistant business development manager for Virginia Beach, worked extensively with Cruz on the project. Like his colleagues, he supported the incinerator at first.
He said bright-eyed entrepreneurs like Cruz are not unusual guests in his office. What rarely happens, he said, is for one of their big ideas - especially one as environmentally sensitive as a medical waste incinerator - to get past the critical eye of so many officials despite so many weaknesses.
So how did this one get through?
``He was just a real charmer, a real salesman,'' said one planner who reviewed and recommended the incinerator. ``He had everyone won over in the department and the commission.''
For his part, Cruz now says that financing was a problem at first, but that ``our investors came in as we expected.''
The in-depth questions from Virginia Beach officials about who those investors were, Cruz said, ``were things my attorney said were way beyond what we needed to disclose.''
When the city and Cruz reached an impasse over this information, he said, the project died.
Cruz is hardly daunted by the experience. He is still shopping the incinerator idea in the region, adding that he now wants to adopt an even more sophisticated technology than the one pitched last summer.
``We're still looking for a site,'' he said. ``I'm not sure where we'll go, though: Portsmouth, Norfolk, Virginia Beach.''
He explained that, upon closer reflection, he had ``a moral problem'' with the technology he once supported - a technology he told planning commissioners last June was ``no more dangerous than . . . a school bus going down the street.''
Cruz now wants to use a ``plasma torch'' technique that releases no emissions from burned medical waste. He estimated the project will cost ``around $6 to $7 million'' and he says investors are at hand. He declined to name them, saying only that they are ``in North Carolina, D.C., all around - really.''
A spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which regulates incinerators, said plasma torch technology is a cutting-edge process, although no such facilities are running in the state.
It was the city's own Virginia Beach Development Authority that was one of the biggest fans of Cruz and his old technology last summer.
The authority, appointed by the city to help coordinate development projects, controlled the land where the proposed incinerator was to be located - a 6.3-acre tract off London Bridge Road and Crusader Circle, inside the Oceana West Corporate Park.
The authority's officers arranged for an architectural drawing of the proposed plant, and took the first step toward approving industrial revenue bonds to help finance its construction, according to records and officials.
But their enthusiasm faded when financial questions soured the deal. Opposition then mounted at City Hall - to the point Cruz pulled his permit application just weeks after gaining Planning Commission approval, saying he had a better opportunity elsewhere, officials and records indicate.
``As you got farther and farther into this, you started wondering how much of this was actually for real,'' recalled Stewart, the assistant business development manager for Virginia Beach.
Reaching Cruz these days is not an easy endeavor. Work and home phone numbers he listed on his permit application last summer are now disconnected.
The company that he said was behind the project, Eastern Regional Environmental Management, is not in the phone book, nor does the state have any record of its incorporation.
Eastern Regional, with Cruz as its president, also does not have a license to do business in Virginia Beach, and there is no record he applied for one, business officials said.
What is known is that last year Cruz rented a small office inside a Virginia Beach contracting company as his company headquarters. A secretary for that contractor, C.L. Pincus & Co. off Sonic Drive, said Cruz packed up and moved away months ago. The forwarding phone number he left with the secretary also is disconnected.
Cruz was found for this story only after he called The Virginian-Pilot and left a message and new phone number. He wanted a reporter to write a story about his desire to help disadvantaged minority children in the region.
When reached at his home in Virginia Beach, Cruz was energetic and thoughtful. He explained, in a hard New York accent, that he had bounced around the country as a football coach for the past 22 years before getting interested in hazardous waste disposal several years ago while in California.
One of his first coaching stints, he said, was at Queens College. But athletic officials at Queens College, in New York and North Carolina, said they have never had a football program.
Cruz's wife is an environmental chemist, he said. He settled in Virginia Beach about three years ago after helping a relative buy a retirement house here. He also said he has six children.
Cruz said that shortly after the Virginia Beach deal collapsed, he had discussions with officials from the city of Portsmouth about placing an incinerator in a heavy industrial zone along the Elizabeth River.
Economic development officials in Portsmouth said Cruz once asked about placing an incinerator at an old sewage treatment center near the river but that nothing ever came of his initiative.
Cruz also made advances toward an abandoned peanut butter plant on Elm Avenue as a possible site for an incinerator and warehouse.
A real estate broker who worked with Cruz on the deal said those offers, too, never panned out. ILLUSTRATION: DEMISE OF A MEDICAL WASTE INCINERATOR
Illustration by JOHN CORBITT/Staff
SOURCE: City of Virginia Beach
Revenue bonds and an architectural drawing were in the works.
A $10 MILLION PLAN
Staff Map
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
by CNB