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Three pest control companies have agreed to pay a combined $3.15 million after investigators found they illegally dumped pesticides and hazardous waste into municipal landfills and improperly discarded customer records containing confidential information.
The settlement resolves allegations brought by 13 California district attorneys’ offices against Clark Pest Control of Stockton, Orkin Services of California, and Crane Pest Control, which prosecutors say violated state laws governing pesticide disposal, hazardous waste management and consumer privacy. The companies are subsidiaries of Rollins Inc., a Georgia-based international pest control provider with more than 70 facilities across California.
The investigation began in 2021 and was led jointly by the San Mateo County and Contra Costa County district attorney’s offices. Kenneth A. Mifsud, now the deputy district attorney overseeing San Mateo County Consumer & Environmental Protection Unit, launched the probe while working in Contra Costa and continued to lead it after moving to San Mateo.
“It made sense that I can continue on the case and continue to lead the case with others. We’re representing the people of the state of California. We don’t have ‘clients,’” Mifsud said.
Investigators across the state conducted a series of undercover waste inspections from March 2021 through February 2022, auditing 40 dumpsters from 22 Clark and Orkin facilities.
“We try to do a fairly decent sampling but we can’t do every facility since we don’t have the resources, but if we’re finding consistent findings, and we were, then we choose a time to contact the company and meet with them,” Mifsud said.
Clark has one San Mateo County facility in Belmont, but it was not among those audited.
“We didn’t actually do a waste audit at (the San Mateo County facility) but the company accepts the extrapolation of the audits as a whole… We think we can get a statistician to say that if we look at the number of items that we are finding with these facilities, it’s likely that each of the facilities during a certain period of time was disposing improperly,” Mifsud said.
According to the district attorney’s office, investigators found thousands of pesticide-containing items and hazardous materials dumped into company bins destined for landfills not permitted to receive such waste. The items included liquid, powder and foam pesticides; baits and pellets; aerosol sprays; ignitable and corrosive chemicals; hazardous batteries; e-waste; hand sanitizers; adhesives; caulking; and cleaning solutions.
Some hazardous waste is required by state law to go to specialized disposal facilities, but Mifsud said sometimes companies use regular facilities to avoid the fees or because they have not implemented a disposal program.
Some pesticides that don’t meet the legal definition of hazardous waste still have their own disposal rules.
“If you’ve got a container of pesticide, the technician is supposed to, when it’s empty or it appears to be empty, triple wash the container. We were finding all kinds of containers, and not that they were necessarily full, but they had decent amounts of the pesticide in them, and some were full,” Mifsud said.
Investigators also found thousands of customer records, including service orders, contracts, invoices and route reports, that had been thrown away without being shredded. State law requires businesses to render personal information unreadable before disposal to protect consumer privacy, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said the case shows why environmental and privacy laws need consistent enforcement.
“The San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office is dedicated to ensuring that California’s environmental protection laws are followed by all companies doing business in our county and across the state,” Wagstaffe said. “Our environmental unit will continue to work with San Mateo County regulators and other district attorneys across the state, to investigate and prosecute those who break the law and endanger the health of our citizens and the environment.”
Once notified of the violations, Clark and Orkin cooperated with prosecutors and “quickly responded to enhance company policies and procedures designed to eliminate the improper management and disposal of these prohibited wastes, and to protect confidential customer information,” according to the district attorney’s office.
“Since being notified that a few of our brands in California were being investigated, we quickly began working cooperatively with the District Attorneys’ offices. Since that time, we have improved our operational and service processes and policies to better reflect the highest industry standards,” an Orkin spokesperson said in a statement to this news organization. “As the industry leader, we look forward to continuing to support our current and future customers in California to help them manage their pest control needs.”
Under the stipulated judgment, the companies will pay $2,017,000 in civil penalties, $400,000 for supplemental environmental compliance projects, $333,000 to cover investigative costs and will receive $400,000 in credit for additional environmental compliance measures.
They must also adopt some operational reforms for at least five years. The companies are required to hire a third-party auditor to conduct dumpster audits at a minimum of 10% of their facilities each year and report the findings of the dumpster audits to prosecutors. Employees complete a training program that ensures compliance with applicable pesticide waste and hazardous waste management rules and maintain proof of the training for three years. The companies must devote a minimum of 2,000 hours annually to enhanced environmental compliance measures.
The settlement was filed in coordination with district attorneys from Alameda, Santa Clara, San Joaquin, Solano, Sonoma, Yolo, Monterey, Orange, Riverside, San Diego and Ventura counties, alongside San Mateo and Contra Costa counties.
Correction: An earlier version of this story listed the incorrect number of counties involved in the lawsuit. There were 13 counties involved. We regret the error.
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