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Toxic Richmond site owner will pay fraction of $5.2 million penalty, lawyer says

Contra Costa Times - 7/4/2017

July 03--RICHMOND -- The owner of a defunct Iron Triangle metal plating company has been ordered to pay $5.2 million in civil penalties to the state for hazardous waste violations.

But the lawyer for Marion Patigler, owner of Electro-Forming Co. at 130 Nevin Ave., said the state will collect only a small fraction of the judgment that was trumpeted on June 26 by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control.

"Marion and her father's estate are judgment proof," James Reed of Lafayette-based Nichols, Catterton, Downing & Reed, said in an email on Monday. "The mother's estate is worth about $400,000 but most of that will be eaten-up in estate attorney fees so I would expect the state to collect somewhere in the $200,000 range."

That amount comes out to less than 4 percent of the $5,219,967.12 judgment, delivered by Contra Costa Superior CourtJudith Craddick.

It comes after years of complaints and legal tussling over the storage, treatment and disposal of hazardous waste at Electro-Forming.

The now-closed electroplating and metal polishing company, which is in a mixed residential and industrial neighborhood, included a 6,900-gallon "Baker tank" containing plating waste, and hazardous levels of cyanide and toxic metals.

In 2013, a former employee complained of questionable safety conditions at the facility. A DTSC investigation found careless dumping of chemical solutions into a storage tank that could have released highly toxic and potentially lethal hydrogen cyanide gas, this newspaper reported in 2014.

Another complaint alleged that Patigler ordered potentially toxic solutions to be placed into "kiddie pools" and allowed to evaporate, instead of disposing of them properly. DTSC shut down plating operations at the facility in late 2014.

In February 2015, Patigler and her company pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to hazardous waste violations, and Patigler received a three-year sentence that was suspended according to terms of probation that included permanently shutting down plating operations and cleaning up all hazardous materials and waste at the facility.

In 2015, Patigler was sentenced to three years in jail for failing to complete the cleanup of hazardous waste at the facility, in violation of her terms of probation, according to a DTSC press release.

The judgment announced last week was imposed on Patigler and the estate of her parents, Gerhard and Ingrid Patigler. It reflects more than $550,000 in enforcement costs incurred by the state Attorney General's Office and $300,000 in cleanup costs incurred by DTSC.

The state did not seek reimbursement of the costs of its investigation and enforcement but had urged the court, as a matter of justice, to consider the costs inflicted on the public in determining the appropriate penalty, according to the judgment.

According to the DTSC news release, Patigler's three-year jail term was imposed in November 2015 after she violated her probation, and she served one-and-a-half years of her sentence at the Martinez Detention Facility. She is no longer in custody, her attorney said.

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(c)2017 the Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.)

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