NORTH LAGS IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROSECUTION

Laws: The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco concentrated on drug
enforcement, not ecology violations.

San Francisco -- Every year the federal government sends people to jail for
damaging the environment - everywhere but in Northern California, where for
years prosecutors have declined to file criminal charges in almost every case.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco, responsible for enforcing
federal law from the once-pristine redwood forests at the Oregon border to
the protected waters of the Monterey Bay, ranks last in the country for
prosecuting environmental crimes.

Instead, an Associated Press review of Justice Department computer records
has found, the office has focused on drugs, immigration and white-collar
crime, exasperating federal pollution cops who have watched their efforts
go nowhere.

"This has been a source of frustration, and we never got used to it. It was
like being a bump on a log," said Dave Wilma, the EPA's special agent in
charge in San Francisco from 1984 to 1997.

"We brought a number of cases that we worked for a long time that never
went anywhere," said Wilma, now with the EPA in Seattle. "I can't tell you
how many times we would go to the prosecutors, and guess what? They're
involved in a dope trial for the next six weeks."

Only 12.5 percent of the environmental cases referred to the region's
federal prosecutors over the past seven years have resulted in criminal
charges, and not one polluter has gone to jail, according to the
Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse in Washington, D.C.

That's well below the national average of 41 percent, according to TRAC,
which has processed Justice Department data since 1992.

It's not because Northern California lacks environmental crimes.

"There's theft of timber from federal lands, intentional violations of the
Clean Water Act, logging on endangered lands and more," said Nathaniel
Lawrence, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources and Defense Council in
San Francisco.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, the Coast Guard and other
agencies routinely bring evidence of crimes to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
San Francisco-based environmental groups, from the mainstream Sierra Club
to the militant Earth First, also clamor to put polluters behind bars.

But federal prosecutors turned away 28 out of 32 environmental cases in
Northern California since 1992, including trucking companies dumping sewage
in San Francisco Bay, pulp mills pumping waste into the Pacific and nuclear
power plants cooking their books.

The four cases U.S. Attorney Michael Yamaguchi decided to pursue, all
related to dumping waste into the Pacific Ocean, resulted in fines and
convictions on lesser charges in 1994.

In contrast, California's other three U.S. attorney's have pursued about
half their environmental crime referrals in court. And Southern Florida,
where the Everglades suffer from development and fragile coral reefs have
been harmed by polluters, prosecutors have led the nation, pursuing more
than 25 environmental crime cases a year in the past three years alone.
That's more than half the cases referred to them.

Before he was replaced by U.S. attorney Robert Mueller in September,
Yamaguchi suffered a high turnover of prosecutors, filed a declining number
of charges overall and encountered problems in some major cases. He has not
returned to legal practice and did not return calls from The Associated Press.

Mueller doesn't dispute the poor record, and said one of his top priorities
is to begin enforcing federal environmental crime laws. While Yamaguchi had
no one in his office dedicated to criminal environmental cases, Mueller has
brought in prosecutor Herb Johnson from Washington, D.C., to focus
exclusively in this area.

"Corporations and individuals in this region need to realize that if they
break the laws or lie about discharges or other violations they will be
prosecuted," Mueller said.

Environmental activists hope he follows through.

"There is plenty of work to be done pursuing criminal violations of the
nation's environmental laws in Northern California," Lawrence said.

Activist Susan Stansbury, executive director of Bay Area Action in Palo
Alto, has spent the past decade trying to get federal prosecutors to file
charges against lumber companies harvesting ancient redwoods in Northern
California, to no avail. State regulators and environmental activists have
been forced to pursue civil cases instead.

"But these are crimes," Stansbury said. "It is devastating for the
environment when the laws aren't enforced."

The dearth of federal criminal prosecutions doesn't mean there hasn't been
any environmental enforcement in Northern California.

Federal regulators have monitored, investigated and fined polluters. State
prosecutors have put some behind bars. And the U.S. Attorney has brought
civil, rather than criminal, charges against individuals and corporations,
enforced with fines and new restrictions.

Nationally, the Justice Department prosecutes about 380 people and
companies a year for allegedly violating environmental laws.

Laurie Dueker, the head of EPA enforcement for California, Nevada, Hawaii
and Arizona, said her agents became so discouraged by the lack of action in
Northern California that they gave up trying with the U.S.Attorney's
Office. Recently, however, she got a call from Johnson urging her to bring
him some work.

"Historically, we got so used to being turned down in San Francisco that we
just turned to other areas," she said. "Now we hear they're changing their
attitude, and we're ready to work with them."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski