Mar 25, 2008

Man jailed for pollution

Berkeley cracking down on toxic waste dumpers

By Doug Oakley / Daily News Staff Writer

People who pollute in Berkeley are going to jail.

That's the message from the city's Toxic Management Division, which recently announced its second jail sentence in just six months for an industrial polluter.

Frank Ghahyaz, owner of Jetco Motors on 5th Street, did 30 days in January and February for allowing motor oil and other toxic waste to make its way into storm drains and into the Bay.

And in September, Gary Reopelle, a silversmith who owns Monsen Plating on Adeline Street, also spent 30 days in jail for putting acid and heavy metals directly into the sewer system.

Nabil Al-Hadithy, manager of the city's Toxic Management Division, said Berkeley became more of an environmental bulldog about three years ago when the state Environmental Protection Agency said it needed to do more.

The city took the message to heart. In the most recent case it used a city law forbidding the dumping of toxins into storm drains to put Ghahyaz in jail.

"Our storm water ordinance is one of the most restrictive: Only clean rainwater can enter our storm drains," Al-Hadithy said. "If you are allowing oil, paints and engine coolant to get into the storm drain, into our creeks and into the Bay, you are violating city law."

In the case of Ghahyaz, the city has been prosecuting him for a little over seven years.

In 2000, he paid a $50,000 fine and was put on five years' probation for dumping toxic waste in the city's landfill.

Carrie Estadt, a hazardous materials specialist for the city, said it all started when a warehouse Ghahyaz owned on 4th Street burned down. He got in trouble when he dumped the remains, including oily engine parts, at the Berkeley landfill.

Since then Estadt said Ghahyaz has had numerous violations for allowing coolant and oil from engines stored outside a 5th Street shop to wash into storm drains when it rains.

"He had hundreds of engines stored outside, and we got numerous complaints of a sheen of oil running down the street from his shop," Estadt said. "He is very close to the Bay so it goes right into the Bay. And he also had other hazardous waste violations."

Those problems from 2002 through 2007 constituted a violation of his probation, Estadt said, and resulted in jail time.

Ghahyaz was unavailable for comment at his shop Friday. But a neighbor who lives directly across the street, said Ghahyaz didn't deserve to go to jail.

"Frank is a great guy and a great neighbor," said the woman who asked not to be identified. "This is crazy. Thirty days in jail? I've been calling the police for two years about the guy who defecates on the sidewalk every day. And they don't even care about the girl who shoots up out here all the time. That's messed up."

But Al-Hadithy said it takes a lot to throw someone in jail for violating pollution laws.

"We have some people who have paperwork violations or forgetting things and those do go to court," Al-Hadithy said. "But something as egregious as knowingly dumping hazardous waste is the highest form of violation. We take that very, very seriously and it's not something we are allowed to ignore."



E-mail Doug Oakley at doakley@bayareanewsgroup.com.