Environmental Law

A Clean Water Act Conviction

By Walter James

On December 2, 2008, the USDOJ, Johnson Matthey Inc., a Pennsylvania corporation, was sentenced for a felony violation of the Clean Water Act at its Salt Lake City precious metals refining facility.  Matthey was sentenced to pay a $3,000,000.00 fine.  The former plant manager and the former general manager of the facility each pleaded guilty and were previously sentenced for a felony violation of making false statements to government officials. 

The case arose out of the USEPA?s investigation into the discharge monitoring reports Matthey was required to submit under the CWA.  From approximately 1996 through 2002, Matthey apparently had difficulty consistently limiting selenium discharges to its permit limit.  An internal audit conducted by Matthey uncovered that the facility had exceeded its permit limit for selenium and that employees had screened samples before submitting them to an outside laboratory for analysis.  Matthey was then warned that this violated the terms of Matthey?s industrial discharge permit. 

In January 2000, to avoid disclosing true concentrations of the selenium-contaminated wastewater discharged from the facility, employees at the Salt Lake City Facility again screened the samples they reported to Central Valley by analyzing in-house the selenium concentrations and then submitting samples with low selenium concentrations to an outside laboratory for eventual reporting to Central Valley. 

The fine of $3,000,000.00 included $750,000.00 for various environmental projects in Utah administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. 

More later.

As always, feel free to contact me by e-mail with any questions at walter.james@jamespllc.com.

WDJiii

Full post as published by Environmental Crimes Blog on December 03, 2008 (boomark / email).