PROVIDENCE — Federal prosecutors in the criminal trial against the gas company Southern Union called to the stand yesterday a key witness, a former employee who had tried unsuccessfully for more than three years to have mercury that was being illegally stored at its Pawtucket facility safely removed.

Marc Viera, the company’s former Environmental Services Manager, had written three requests for proposals, or RFPs, soliciting a company to transport and dispose of the hazardous liquid. He submitted the RFPs to his supervisor in 2002, 2003 and again in 2004, but the requests were never put out to bid by the company, and the work never started, according to his testimony.

Meanwhile, liquid mercury continued to sit in glass and plastic containers as well as inside obsolete mercury sealed gas regulators in an office at the company’s unstaffed Tidewater facility, at the intersection of Taft and Tidewater streets.

Then in 2004, a group of youths broke into the Tidewater facility, stealing the containers of mercury and smashing them on the grounds and at Lawn Terrace, a nearby apartment complex. When the break-in and spill was discovered, it resulted in a cleanup effort costing the company $6.6 million.

Southern Union is charged with two counts of illegally storing mercury and one count of failing to notify authorities after it learned that the highly toxic metal had been released. The Texas-based company faces more than $67 million in fines if found guilty on all three counts.

Viera began his testimony late Monday afternoon as the trial entered its second week.

He explained how Southern Union, shortly after its purchase of several smaller natural gas companies in Rhode Island and Massachusetts in 2000, began a program to remove from residences gas regulators containing mercury, some of which dated to the 1960s.

The removal program called for employees to take the mercury-sealed regulators, or MSRs, safely from homes and take them to the Tidewater facility, a former natural gas manufacturing plant.

The company then hired an outside vendor, International Environmental Trading Co., or IETC, to transfer the mercury from the regulators to steel storage flasks before sending them to a reclamation facility in Pennsylvania. The metal casings of the regulators, after being further cleaned, were recycled as scrap metal.

But that multi-step program lasted less than a year. In December 2001, IETC’s contract with Southern Union ceased as the company’s priorities shifted, and the mercury began to pile up at Tidewater.

Employees continued to remove regulators from homes, bringing them to Tidewater, where they were wrapped in two layers of plastic bags and then placed in plastic wading pools. Additionally, liquid mercury –– nearly 100 pounds of it –– was collected from a variety of sources within the company and sent to Tidewater.

Viera testified about how a plastic gallon container of mercury was discovered in the locker of a deceased employee at the company’s Charles Street site and taken to Tidewater.

In 2002, he drafted the first of three RFPs to remove the regulators and mercury from the Tidewater site. It detailed the amounts of mercury stockpiled at the Tidewater facility: “90 mercury-containing regulators, one plastic jug with approximately one quart of mercury, five manometers [pressure measures] each with approximately one cup of mercury, four glass jars each with approximately one pint of mercury, two steel vials each with approximately one cup of mercury, and one glass jar with approximately one cup of mercury.”

Viera said the RFP was reviewed by his boss, Robert Young, before being forwarded to the company’s Texas-based Environmental Director, Alan Fish. It was never issued.

Viera testified that he filed the same RFP in 2003 and again in 2004. Both times, his requests were ignored.

After completing his testimony yesterday morning, Viera faced cross-examination from Southern Union’s attorney, John Tarantino, in the afternoon. Under questioning, Viera acknowledged that, at all times, he considered the mercury stored at Tidewater as a “hazardous material” rather than a “hazardous waste.”

The distinction is one that the defense is hinging on to prove the company’s innocence. The company was within its rights to keep hazardous materials on the site without a special permit, but not hazardous waste, according to the defense’s opening statements last week.

Viera, who quit the company shortly after the 2004 incident and today works with disabled children, is the 15th and potentially final witness called by the prosecution.

He returns to the witness stand today.

pmarcelo@projo.com