Grand Jury Awaits those who don't Play by the Rules -
Blasting companies need to play by the rules. But sometimes they try to get cute. Here’s a tale of deception and fraud that led to a Grand Jury indictment for its perpetrators.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, indictments have recently been issued against Ohio’s US Technology and its Missouri affiliate for illegal transport and storage of spent plastic blast media that was contaminated with heavy metals – 13 million pounds of it.
UST has a policy of taking back used blast media, claiming that by doing so, its users were no longer a generator of waste. Instead, it claimed, the user of plastic media becomes a producer of spent material that is to be productively and beneficially used and, therefore exempt from the responsibilities of a generator.
The waste “bead blast” was created by the removal of paint from military equipment. It contains heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium and lead. The indictments states that the powder-like remains are deemed hazardous waste and are subject to the regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act ("RCRA"). However, RCRA provides that if 75% of this material is recycled within one calendar year, the material is no longer considered hazardous waste and is not subject to the regulations of RCRA. Since UST customers “lease” the blasting materials, the onus is on UST to recycle it.
The fraud dates as far back as 2000 – and seemingly never concludes. In 2008, one defendant
plead guilty for defrauding the government. According to EPA documents, the former president and manager of a Mississippi subcontractor, Hydromex, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for illegally storing and disposing of hazardous waste (used plastic media) contaminated with the heavy metals cadmium and chromium. From 2000 through 2003, he portrayed his company as a recycling operation, thereby exempting the waste he received from regulation under Federal hazardous waste laws. In reality, rather than recycle the hazardous wastes, Hydromex buried it. The EPA called it a case of a “Sham” recycler who contaminated soil and groundwater. (An EPA photo depicting the MS site is shown here.)
Fast forward a decade. According to Federal indictments, nine million pounds of the waste that was initially dumped in Mississippi was dug up and illegally transported to Missouri by the named companies’ officers from Missouri and Ohio.
The St. Louis indictment claims that UST agreed to remove waste in 2003, 2011 and again in 2013. The indictment states that instead of properly cleaning the hazardous waste located in Mississippi, UST began transporting the recovered hazardous waste to the facility in Missouri without authorization.
Over 20 days between Oct. 30, 2013, and Dec. 3, 2013, as much as 300,600 pounds of the waste per day was shipped to the Missouri warehouse. The last shipment was transported to Missouri 28 days before his deadline to remove the waste from Mississippi.
While the shipments were occurring, according to Secretary of State Records, a new company, Missouri Green Materials, was formed Nov. 4, 2013.
The Grand Jury indictment states, “At no time did UST, or any of its employees possess a RCRA permit to transport hazardous waste to Missouri.” The indictment further says Missouri Green Materials and its facility did not have a permit to “treat, store, or dispose of hazardous waste,” even though, it claims, those in charge knew the waste was high in cadmium.
Now, thirteen million pounds of hazardous waste has been illegally stored in a building in a Missouri River floodplain for nearly four years, according to the Post-Dispatch.
In a September 2016 agreement, UST agreed to form a plan to properly remove the waste from Missouri Green Material’s Missouri facility and test for any soil contamination. But prosecutors said the waste was still there. Both companies were indicted April 26 2017 in St. Louis on a felony count of conspiracy, and two individuals were indicted on a conspiracy charge.
According to the report, the UST official also faces an 85-count indictment filed in federal court in Georgia in June that accuses him, UST, and others, of conspiring to bribe a Defense Department employee to steer work to the company.
All have pleaded not guilty to the charges. UST claimed it spent $12.8 million cleaning up the above-ground waste, and claimed, in a lawsuit against Mississippi regulators, that the waste was not hazardous and could be recycled.
A lawyer for the Missouri Green Materials owner claimed that she was unaware that the material was hazardous, noting that the material was recyclable and could be used as a concrete additive. The same lawyer says the waste was shipped to Missouri in hopes “it would become somebody else’s problem.”
One person commented that the cost of proper disposal of this waste could be the ultimate responsibility of US taxpayers, since it is derived from US government property at military bases.
We always recommend that users of blast media have waste media tested for hazards before it leaves your facility, and keep the records forever. And, of course, work with reputable vendors.
For more information…
St Louis Post-Dispatch article:
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/millions-of-pounds-of-hazardous-waste-illegally-trucked-to-missouri/article_288024f4-c01a-5353-9e81-fe431ea2d6f7.html
Grand Jury Indictment:
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/stltoday.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/3/0e/30ea4736-6488-5d1a-a054-04e09538032e/59a873f62612d.pdf.pdf
