Plating Firm Owner Sentenced in Dumping

The owner of a Burbank plating company who had pleaded guilty to 11 counts of illegally storing and transporting cyanide-contaminated sludge was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to pay more than $93,500 in fines, a Los Angeles County investigator said Monday.

Larry Barker, owner of Artcraft Plating and Finishing Co., was also ordered to perform 200 hours of community service at his sentencing last week in Burbank Municipal Court, said Marty Kasman, a deputy health officer with the county Department of Health Services. In exchange for his guilty pleas, the city of Burbank dropped 27 other charges against him.

Investigators from the Department of Health Services had conducted surveillances of the plating firm, dressed as undercover sanitation workers to collect the firm’s garbage and put monitors in the sewers after company officials refused entry to inspectors last year, Kasman said.

Cyanide was found in the sewer and in three trash bins when the firm was moving last year from the 100 block of Verdugo Avenue to a new location on East Santa Anita Avenue, Kasman said.

“Our lab analysis showed this is probably the highest concentration of cyanide we’ve ever seen in a hazardous waste dumping case,” Kasman said.

Barker said in a telephone interview Monday that “we made some mistakes” during the move to the new plant, but that the relocation has enabled the company to eliminate the use of cyanide and chrome in its plating work, replacing it with a soaplike solution.

“We don’t even have those chemicals anymore,” Barker said.

Artcraft primarily does plating for military and aerospace contractors, Barker said.