In February, PG&E fired a Camp Fire contractor for alleged bribery and fraud. They didn’t say much, but I’ve been looking into this story for months.

The PG&E contractor has a wild historyhttps://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach unten">
2/ The contractor, Bay Area Concrete Recycling, operated an unpermitted concrete recycling facility for years in the Bay Area.

The city fined the contractor nearly $60,000 — but it kept going, blowing dust into neighborhoods and storm drains.
3/ In 2014, the company owners also dumped hundreds of loads of waste on federally protected wetlands in Newark.

They were working with a “mud broker,” James Lucero, who had already been convicted of bribing landfill operators in San Jose.
4/ After police shut down the Newark site, Lucero was indicted for violations of the Clean Water Act.

He was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison last year.
5/ Shortly after the Newark site was shut down, a manager Lucero had hired to run the site, Kevin Olivero, was hired by Bay Area Concrete — as CEO
6/ With Olivero as CEO, the business expanded into San Francisco, Richmond, Sacramento, Seattle and San Jose.

In some of those places, they ran into trouble with regulators as well.
7/ Bay Area Concrete continued to be unpermitted at its Hayward headquarters.

Neighboring businesses complained dust interfered with their operations and worried it was affecting their employees’ health.
8/ But one neighbor didn’t have a problem: PG&E. The utility has a service center across the street from Bay Area Concrete.

It said that PG&E hired them to sweep their lots and later expanded the contract to include PG&E locations all over the Bay Area and Central Valley.
9/ The city of Hayward ordered the concrete recycling plant shut down in 2018. Bay Area Concrete appealed, but at a city Planning Commission meeting, the appeal was denied.

“This is really an illegal business that’s asking to continue operating,” one commissioner said.
10/ The *same day* the appeal was denied, the Camp Fire broke out near Paradise. It would burn for weeks, killing 85 people and burning nearly 19,000 structures.
11/ While the fire was still burning, a lawyer for Bay Area Concrete’s owners founded a new company at a business address for another company they owned.

They would later transfer that company to a PG&E employee who oversaw disposal work in Paradise.
12/ By December, Bay Area Concrete was building a whole new disposal site in Paradise just for PG&E.

It took in slurry waste from hydrovac trucks, special excavation trucks that are used to dig around delicate equipment like buried gas lines or cables.
13/ PG&E started doing more business with Bay Area Concrete and its owners. Bay Area Concrete built another disposal facility on PG&E property in Petaluma.

After the Kincade fire nearby, another of the owners’ companies helped build PG&E’s command center, according to BACR.
14/ But in February, PG&E publicly accused Bay Area Concrete of bribing utility employees and overcharging PG&E.

Bay Area Concrete says that PG&E is trying to get out of paying its bills -- PG&E owes BACR $4 million in bankruptcy filings and BACR says PG&E owes them $14 million
15/ In multiple interviews with the news organizations, Bay Area Concrete officials denied the firm had done anything wrong.
16/ PG&E did not respond to questions about its vetting process in hiring BACR, saying only, “PG&E has initiated an internal review to determine why this wasn’t detected earlier, and we will be enhancing our protocols to ensure this doesn’t happen again."
17/ While PG&E ended its relationship with BACR and the employees involved, it& #39;s unclear what may happen next. The case is under criminal investigation. BACR denies all of the fraud and bribery allegations.
19/ I’m still reporting on PG&E and California’s hydrovac / waste hauling industries. Have any tips? Email me https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👉" title="Rückhand Zeigefinger nach rechts" aria-label="Emoji: Rückhand Zeigefinger nach rechts"> OakMorr@protonmail.com.
You can follow @OakMorr.
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