Dealership to pay $15,000 in fines

Deepa Bharath

COSTA MESA -- A local car dealership will pay $15,000 for its delay in

repairing an underground storage tank used to store waste motor fuel at

its Harbor Boulevard facility, officials said.

The Orange County district attorney filed a lawsuit against Theodore

Robins Ford on Tuesday.

The suit stated that the dealership “failed to repair, upgrade or

remove a 1,000-gallon waste oil underground tank system.”

The dealership agreed to settle Jan. 30, said Joe Walker, attorney for

Theodore Robins. The judgment, however, was not received until Thursday.

“There was never any pollution on the site,” Walker said.

The law required that the underground tank either be upgraded or

removed by December 1998. Theodore Robins did the work in 1999, he said.

“The fine covers the seven-month delay,” Walker said.

Of the $15,000 fine, Theodore Robins will pay $10,000 to the county,

$1,000 to the Orange County Health Care Agency as reimbursement for

investigation costs and $4,000 to the California District Attorneys

Assn.’s Environmental Trust.

The Orange County district attorney’s office started working on the

case about six months ago after officials received a complaint from the

Orange County Health Care Agency, said Tori Richards, spokeswoman for the

district attorney.

“They referred the case to us because they did not get compliance from

[the dealership],” she said.

Richards said the dealership did cooperate with the district

attorney’s office to resolve the situation.

“We’re glad they settled this at an early stage,” she said. “We can

now use our time and resources to focus on other cases.”

* Deepa Bharath covers public safety and courts. She may be reached at

(949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at o7 [email protected] .