This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under L.A. Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Pardon Our Gas
Feds: Trendy hotel dumped dangerous chems into L.A.’s subway
It’s the posh rooftop pool at the Standard Hotel in downtown L.A. where Britney Spears seduced Matt Encinias, a college boy extra from the singer’s just-wrapped video, clueless he’d been hand-picked as the diva’s desert.
“I was told all she wanted to do that night was kiss a boy,” said Matt of his private, 2am wrap party with Brit in 2007. “I turned around and saw that she was topless and had fake tattoos of flowers on her nipples.” How totally L.A.
The Standard’s swank pool is a fave place for young hipsters to get naked and frolic — an icon of Los Angeles decadence at its finest. And, say the Feds, the soaking gun for a chemical dumping incident that shut down L.A.’s subway and set off terrorist attack alarms citywide.
Criminal charges filed by U.S. Attorney Tom O’Brien cite commuters and a cop falling ill to fumes that settled in the 7th Avenue and Figueroa Metro Center subway station on January 19 when pool acid and chlorine allegedly dumped by hotel employees into storm drains seeped in, formed a noxious gas and ignited sheer panic.
The intersection of Sixth and Flower was closed for hours. Down in the subway, riders were puking freely. Now, the Standard’s management may be feeling a little queasy.
New York-based HotelsAB LLC, doing business as André Balazs Properties and Standard Hotels has been charged with violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by illegally disposing of corrosive materials (and we don’t mean residue from Britney’s attack on the kid).
“We are sorry for this employee mistake involving diluted swimming pool chemicals,” Standard spokeswoman Nadine Johnson told the AP, blaming it all on hotel underlings. “We will continue to assist the government.”
Sure, sure. But what about hotel worker Jared Murphy, quoted in the Feds’ complaint as saying his boss ordered him to put on gloves and run water down the drain while he pumped concentrated chemicals out of two 50-gallon tanks each three-quarters full. Murphy says he was told the water would “not make it so hazardous.”
Huh? Let’s repeat that: “Not make it so hazardous.”
The Standard’s brass have been ordered to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on February 9. More charges are possible, though those already in play carry a maximum fine of $500,000. No prison, though, thanks to the hotel’s corporate status. Whew!
The FBI and Los Angeles City Fire Department have been credited with the bust being prosecuted by assistant United States Attorney Joseph O. Johns, chief of the Feds’ Environmental Crimes Section who soars to #1 in our Quote of the Year competition: “Dilution is not the solution to pollution,” Johns said.
Posted by January 31st, 2009
Comments (0)