L.A. industrial metal platers get shellacked.

L.A. industrial metal platers get shellacked

Industrial metal platers in the City of Los Angeles said last week they are getting whacked by sudden and huge increases in city sewage and pollution fees, which are putting them at a disadvantage to rivals in other cities -- and may even drive many metal platers out of business.

The fees and fines are, in part, intended to finance the intensified enforcement of laws pertaining to industrial users of water. A typical metal plater faces another $10,000 a year in ordinary fees, while those in violation of certain rules can be hit with big testing costs and additional fines.

Arrow Plating, a 59-year-old South Central Los Angeles business, is a case in point. "On July 15, we received a surprise $112,333 sewage facilities charge. The city said our usage had increased to 33,000 from 20,000 gallons a day, but in fact our usage has decreased," said Frank Gleason, president of the Arrow Plating, a $1.1 million-a-year in revenues enterprise.

Metal platers use a lot of water, as in 30,000 gallons a day each, which they discharge into sewers. And therein lies the problem: Under a federal order, the City of Los Angeles is trying to clean up sewer water and is levying some fairly hefty fines and fees in the process.

He added, "It is a one-time permitting fee, they said, required under new federal regulations. When we asked the city to document our past water use, they say they don't have the manpower to do it. How am I to compete with platers in Lynwood, Compton, Huntington Park and Gardena, who don't have to pay these bills?"

Additionally, Arrow Plating, which plates metal with chrome, is spending $500 a week on testing its effluent to comply with a city administrative order, said Gleason, 32. "We are being forced to test for things we have never used, such as arsenic and chlorinated solvents. The whole process is unnecessarily costly and adversarial."

But city workers say they are only enforcing rules promulgated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency -- and trying to prevent heavy metals and other toxics from befouling reclamation efforts at the city's Hyperion sewage treatment plant.

If too many heavy metals enter the plant, then Hyperion's "sludge" -- semi-solid material that results from cleaning sewage before it enters the ocean -- will be too poisonous to use for fertilizer and other recycling efforts.

The cost of bringing into compliance industry that must "pre-treat" their sewage -- reduce poisons in the effluents before dumping water into city sewers -- is being borne by industry, said Vincent Varsh, principal engineer in the city sanitation department's enforcement division.

"There are program costs that the city has incurred in order to meet federal requirements for our pre-treatment program," he said. "We (the city) are under an administrative order from the (federal) Environmental Protection Agency . . . and we have to increase those fees."

Varsh said that stricter enforcement is causing headaches, but that the city has no choice under the federal edict and sewage water should be cleaned up in any event. He said that Arrow Plating had problems bringing its plant into compliance.

The Metal Finishing Association of Southern California, a 200-member body, is against the new fees, said Harry Levy, board member of the association and president at Gene's Plating in East Los Angeles, which employs about 70 workers.

"I am paying $10,000 a year under the new fees," said Levy, who primarily performs decorative chrome plating for auto wheels, roll-cages, bumpers and furniture. "We are getting charged for everything under the sun."

Levy said that in the Los Angeles area are about 400 chrome, zinc, brass, nickel, gold and other types of metal platers, which employ about 12,000 workers in the Southland.

As an industry, metal platers have been black sheep among sewer administrators for years, due to discharges of heavy metals and other poisons into sewer lines.

But they also plate a variety of goods, such as aerospace parts, electronic circuitry, lamps and almost anything else in which the base metal has another coat of metal upon it.

PHOTO : Gleason and one of his poisonous vats: Received surprise $112,333 bill from the city