THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 23, 1995 TAG: 9505230262
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER AND MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 110 lines
Fine Petroleum Co., whose warehouse burned Saturday in one of Norfolk's largest fires in two decades, was the subject of a criminal investigation in 1993 for illegal dumping of hazardous wastes into city garbage trucks.
At the same time as the investigation by local and federal authorities, federal crews were removing some 220 leaky chemical drums stored without a permit on a weedy back lot of the Norfolk company, according to officials and court records.
The Environmental Protection Agency spent $1.5 million on the 1993 cleanup, safely disposing of thousands of gallons of solvents, paints, formaldehyde, other flammable liquids and other toxic chemicals, records show. The EPA still is trying to recover the cost from company president Milton Fine.
But the government never got to present its criminal evidence, partly for fear of losing a chance to recover the $1.5 million. A federal judge in March told government lawyers that they needed to focus on the money or the criminal allegations, but not both. They chose the cleanup money.
That decision negated an agreement, signed in January by Fine on behalf of his company, to plead guilty to two criminal counts of disposing of hazardous chemicals - formaldehyde and hydrazine - without a permit. The company could have been fined up to $1 million.
The agreement was the result of months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Fine's lawyer, Franklin Swartz.
Asked about reports of illegal dumping of chemical wastes by Fine into city trash trucks, Swartz said, ``That was never provable, and Milton denied that he ever did anything like that.''
Doug Fox was the EPA's on-scene cleanup coordinator at Fine Petroleum in 1993. He also is leading a team, expected to arrive in Norfolk today, to help identify and dispose of the chemicals remaining in the shell of the warehouse at the end of St. Julian Avenue.
In a telephone interview Monday, Fox said he was not surprised to hear about Saturday's fire. He stressed how he had asked Fine two years ago to purge his warehouse of the mish-mash of chemical containers and drums kept inside.
But Fine said the materials were products he had soon hoped to sell. That was never checked, because the EPA can only intervene, Fox said, when stored hazardous chemicals are ``wastes.'' Officials are powerless when the materials are ``products.''
``The stuff seemed to be in fairly good shape'' inside the warehouse, Fox recalled. ``But I could see the writing on the wall, and that's what happened down there over the weekend.''
Fox got involved with Fine Petroleum in 1992, when state and local officials asked the EPA to determine if problems at the company were an imminent threat to human and environmental health. A study that summer determined that it was.
Fine signed a cleanup agreement shortly afterward, but Fox again had to intervene when his office received a proposed work order to remove two storage trailers. Investigators had seen eight on the scene.
``We asked him, `What happened to the other six boxes?' '' Fox recalled, ``and he said that he had cleaned and sold them himself.
``He's used to doing business without any rules, without government regulations,'' Fox said. ``He's still operating like he's back in the '50s or '60s. Well, this is the friggin' '90s . . . and we can't let that stuff continue.''
Fine, whose family has run the business for 70 years, has declined comment on the matter.
Fine Petroleum has a long history of environmental problems. According to court documents and news accounts:
In 1987, a state inquiry concluded that Fine was improperly storing solvents and petroleum products at the warehouse site.
In 1988, a Fine employee dumped toxic chemicals onto a vacant lot in the Overbrook neighborhood. The company agreed to clean up the site. A company lawyer said Fine officials did not approve of, or know about, the dumping.
In May 1992, Milton Fine was seen throwing several small containers of hazardous waste into a trash dumpster in a public housing neighborhood near the warehouse. The company pleaded guilty to one count of illegally disposing of hazardous waste without a permit.
In July 1992, a citizen complained that Fine Petroleum had dumped corrosive liquids and other petroleum products at the site. That brought state and city inspectors to the site, who found a toxic mess.
The inspectors found eight, 40-foot trailers filled with hundreds of containers of paints, thinners, sulfuric acid and other hazardous substances, many of them leaking.
Inspectors also found dozens of drums of hazardous chemicals stored throughout the property. Many were stored outside, unprotected from the elements, and were deteriorating. Some drums were lying on their side in pools of standing water.
EPA declared the site a public hazard, citing the imminent threat of fire or explosion, among other dangers.
Fine Petroleum and another company at the site, Mariner Hi-Tech Paint, agreed to clean up the property. But just a few weeks later, EPA stopped the cleanup. That was when Fox found that some trailers and their toxic loads had been removed without the government's permission.
Under federal law, the company could be hit with triple damages - about $4.5 million - for failing to live up to the cleanup agreement.
So far, the EPA has not billed Fine Petroleum for the $1.5 million cleanup, said company attorney Michael J. Gardner, but ``I wouldn't be surprised if we get a demand letter from them. . . . We don't know what their plans are.''
An EPA spokeswoman in Philadelphia said Monday that the agency has seven years after a cleanup action to recover costs. Asked if the agency would soon pursue that money, EPA spokeswoman Felicia Dailey said, ``Oh, yeah, we sure will.'' ILLUSTRATION: MAP
A. LIBREROS/Staff
KEYWORDS: FIRES HAZARDOUS WASTE by CNB