EPA Enforcement Roundup: Week of 2/3

Penalties for Common Environmental Compliance Mistakes

The EPA Enforcement Roundup gives you insight into how and why US EPA and State partners assess penalties for environmental noncompliance.

All violations or claims discussed below are alleged only unless we say otherwise, and we withhold the names of organizations and individuals to protect their privacy.

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An Illinois-based waste company will pay $9.5M to resolve alleged hazardous waste violations nationwide.

US EPA and the Department of Justice announced an agreed settlement with a hazardous waste management company for alleged “systemic, nationwide violations” of the RCRA hazardous waste regulations over a period of several years.

The Agency states that the company failed to:

• Properly manage hazardous waste.
• Accurately maintain required manifest records when transporting hazardous waste.
• Timely submit information for thousands of manifests to the e-Manifest system.

The settlement requires payment of a $9.5 million civil penalty, one of the largest civil penalties ever paid for RCRA violations. The company “largely ceased managing hazardous waste” in the US back in 2020 but is accountable for these alleged violations that occurred before that cessation.

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An Oregon petroleum distribution and storage company paid an $87,700 penalty to resolve alleged Clean Water Act violations.

During an inspection, Agency officials allegedly found violations of the Clean Water Act’s Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) regulations, which require facilities to prepare and implement a plan to protect local waterways and shorelines from the discharge of oil.

Federal inspectors found that the company failed to:

• Ensure that the facility’s diagrams match the actual facility layout.
• Maintain adequate secondary containment in the event of a spill.
• Have inspection records for oil-water separators used as spill prevention equipment at the facility.
• Include routine periodic leak testing procedures for underground oil piping in the facility’s plan.

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A New Mexico refinery must implement compliance measures at an estimated cost of $137M to resolve alleged Clean Air Act violations.

The refinery allegedly failed to comply with “a wide range” of regulations that cover flaring, fenceline monitoring of benzene emissions, wastewater, storage vessels, leak detection and repair, and heat exchanger leaks.

Under the settlement, the refinery must pay a civil penalty of $35 million—half to the US, and half to New Mexico.

Including reductions already achieved in response to EPA’s investigations, the compliance measures are projected to achieve reductions of 180 tons per year of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), 2,716 tons per year of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 51 tons per year of NOx, and 31 tons per year of sulfur dioxide.

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