DENVER—A California specialty painting company is working on a plea deal with federal prosecutors in the deaths of five workers at a Colorado power plant in 2007, attorneys said.
RPI Coating Inc. of Santa Fe Springs is expected to plead guilty to five misdemeanor counts of workplace safety violations resulting in death, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jaime Pena said Wednesday at a hearing.
The workers died after a fire broke out inside a pipeline at Xcel Energy’s Cabin Creek hydroelectric plant near Georgetown, about 40 miles west of Denver. The men were inside the pipeline resealing it at the time.
While a plea deal has not been finalized, RPI likely would agree to pay “substantial” compensation to the victims’ survivors, Pena said in a story Thursday by The Denver Post.
A sixth charge of obstruction of justice and separate charges against RPI owner Philippe Goutagny and vice president James Thompson would be dismissed, Pena said.
RPI attorney Larry Pozner said the company hoped to have a deal completed and victim compensation paid before Christmas.
Chief U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel set a Dec. 19 hearing for RPI to formally enter a plea.
The workers were trapped in the tunnel when a flammable solvent they were using to clean an epoxy paint sprayer ignited on Oct. 2, 2007.
They communicated by radio for 45 minutes with colleagues and rescue crews. But reaching the workers would have involved using ropes or ladders to go down a 20-foot vertical section of tunnel then along a 1,000-foot section at a 55-degree slope, to reach a horizontal section where they were located.
Rescuers tried lowering air tanks to the workers, but the five were overcome by smoke and fumes.
Killed were Donald Dejaynes, 43, Dupree Holt, 37, James St. Peters, 52, Gary Foster, 48, and Anthony Aguirre, 18, all of California.
Federal prosecutors charged RPI, the two executives and Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy Inc., which owns the power plant, with workplace-safety violations. A Denver jury acquitted Xcel of all charges in June, though the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Xcel and RPI nearly $2 million.
Xcel also has paid millions of dollars to victims’ families to settle civil lawsuits.
The obstruction of justice charge against RPI alleges company officials took cameras and log books from some of the dead workers’ vehicles to cover up safety failures.
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Information from: The Denver Post,
