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But tests of seawater collected before and after the heavy rains that came in late January, after the fires abated, identified five heavy metals — beryllium, copper, chromium, nickel and lead — at levels significantly above established safety thresholds for marine life.

But levels of beryllium, copper, chromium, nickel and lead were two to four times higher than the maximum allowed under California state law at Big Rock Beach in Malibu, where the wreckage of several destroyed houses still lie on the sand.

Accusations of theft, forgery, avarice and betrayal erupted, prompting a bitter three-year lawsuit that led, in 2016, to the division of Bertoia’s most fabled work: a centuries-old stone barn stuffed with nearly 100 of his so-called Sonambients, intricate but austere sculptures he welded from rods of beryllium copper and played like a virtuoso.

These workers were eventually sent to work in the conglomerate’s mines, a smelter and factories that produce some of the most highly sought minerals on earth, including lithium, nickel, manganese, beryllium, copper and gold.

At Marion Manufacturing, Johnson this year is spending several hundred thousand dollars on new factory equipment to turn stainless steel and beryllium copper into a variety of industrial parts.