General Magnaplate to close California facility

Engineering coatings company General Magnaplate Corp. has announced it will close its Ventura, Calif., facility and will serve West Coast customers from its Arlington, Texas, and Linden, N.J., operations.

The firm cites difficult business conditions created by the state of California and the settlement of a potential lawsuit against subsidiary General Magnaplate California by the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) of Santa Barbara, Calif., as the two main reasons for the closure. The EDC claimed that General Magnaplate Corp. had violated the Clean Water Act.

Reacting to the allegations by the EDC that the company's facility was discharging polluted storm water into the Santa Clara River, General Magnaplate President and COO Edmund Aversenti commented, "General Magnaplate is not in violation of the Clean Water Act, and ongoing investigations suggest that the alleged polluted storm water runoff from our facility actually came on to our property from neighboring properties exempt from CWA compliance. We have agreed to settle with the EDC for purely economic reasons. This is particularly upsetting given that we have a strong SWPPP (Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan) in place at the California facility and have contracted consultants to insure that we are in compliance.”