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EPA SETS ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT RECORDS IN 1999

Release Date: 1/19/2000
Contact Information: Dave Schmidt, U.S. EPA, (415)744-1578

     FINES, CLEANUP ORDERS AGAINST BIG POLLUTERS IN CA, AZ, NV, HI
                               
     (San Francisco) --  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced record enforcement actions and penalties for Fiscal Year 1999, including $3.6 billion for environmental cleanup, pollution control equipment, and improved monitoring, an 80 percent increase over 1998; $166.7 million in civil penalties, 60 percent higher than 1998; and 3,935 civil judicial and administrative actions, the highest in the last three years.  Criminal defendants were sentenced to a record 208 years of prison time for committing environmental crimes.

     In California, EPA recovered a total of $33,774,000 in environmental cleanup costs paid by responsible parties.  In addition, polluters paid fines totalling $9,057,761 in California, $243,347 in Arizona, $2,084,400 in Nevada, $420,477 in Hawaii, and $170,900 in Guam.  In the four-state region, EPA concluded a total of 230 civil judicial and administrative enforcement actions against polluters in the four-state region, brought 23 criminal cases and 31 civil cases against polluters, and issued 90 administrative penalty complaints.

     Beyond the dollar figures, however, EPA's enforcement actions helped advance environmental protection throughout the Western U.S.  Among the high profile environmental problems addressed through enforcement in 1999: tire fires in Arizona, PCB contamination off the Southern California coast; wetlands destruction in Sacramento County, sewage spills in Maui, an oil spill in the ocean near San Francisco, water pollution in Lake Mead, and MTBE contamination in Santa Monica.

     "The Clinton/Gore Administration is committed to ensuring that industrial polluters pay the price for disregarding America's environmental laws and jeopardizing the public's health," said EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner.  "This year's enforcement statistics send a strong signal that we will unfailingly take action against those who illegally pollute the environment of our country."

     Added Laura Yoshii, deputy chief for EPA's western region: "What's encouraging about this year's enforcement record is that it demonstrates our commitment to working cooperatively with our state and tribal partners, and that we're tackling head-on some of the most difficult environmental issues facing the Western United States."

Regional Enforcement Highlights

     EPA and the Coast Guard, FBI, and state Department of Fish and Game won a $9.4
     million judgment against the captain and corporate operators of the Liberian oil tanker
     M/T Command, which negligently spilled nearly 3,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the
     Pacific Ocean near San Francisco in September 1998.  The Coast Guard located and
     boarded the ship on the high seas, the first-ever such interception for suspicion of
     environmental violations.

     In Santa Monica, Calif., several drinking water wells were polluted by the fuel additive MTBE and had to be shut down, forcing the city and a water company to purchase more expensive replacement water.  EPA and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered two oil companies responsible for the pollution, Shell and Equilon (a joint venture of Shell and Texaco), to provide replacement water for five years at an estimated cost of $3.2 million per year. EPA and the Water Board also ordered Conoco, Inc. to determine the extent of MTBE pollution from its former gas station in Culver City, as a first step toward taking responsibility for its share of the contamination.

     In Sacramento County, Calif., EPA won a precedent-setting $1.5 million judgment, the
     largest-ever court-ordered penalty for unauthorized filling of wetlands, in the Borden
     Ranch case.  Developer Angelo Tsakapoulos had destroyed seasonal vernal pool wetlands
     by deep ripping, a deep plowing technique that uses bulldozers dragging steel shanks to
     tear apart the impermeable clay layer underlying the topsoil. Vernal pools are a wetland
     type found only in California that provide habitat for several rare and endangered species, as well as migratory waterfowl.

     In Southern California,  EPA won agreements to pay $60 million in assessment and
     cleanup costs from three major companies and 155 municipal government agencies,
     mostly in Los Angeles County, that were responsible for polluting the offshore Palos
     Verdes Shelf with toxic, long-lived PCBs.  The three companies, whose combined tab
     came to $14 million, are Westinghouse Electric (now part of CBS Corp.), Potlatch Corp.,
     and Simpson Paper Co.

     In California's Central Valley, EPA won fines totalling $643,036 and a one-year prison term for the former manager of the Modesto Tallow rendering plant in Modesto, for felony violations of the Clean Water Act.  The facility processes animal carcasses, generating tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater daily, which is ordinarily treated on-site and discharged into Modesto's municipal sewer system.  Former plant manager Larry Bietz admitted directing employees to falsify results of required water samples taken to ensure the wastewater meets pollutant limits before entering the sewer system.  The company, which admitted negligently discharging a pollutant into the Tuolumne River, falsifying monitoring results, and tampering with a monitoring device, was fined $600,000 and ordered to reimburse the City of Modesto $37,536 for the cost of responding to the pollution and investigating the case.

     In the San Francisco Bay Area, EPA won a $594,000 penalty from Chevron to resolve
     Clean Water Act violations at Chevron's Richmond oil refinery on San Pablo Bay. Under
     this consent decree, Chevron must also conduct toxicity testing of wastewater released to
     a wetland to prevent the release of acutely toxic wastewater.
     
          In Arizona, EPA issued an order and signed a consent agreement with three county
     governments and other parties responsible for abandoning three million tires on the Gila
     River Indian Community near Phoenix.  The tires had caught fire and burned for three
     months in mid-1998.  The agreement and order require the responsible parties to remove
     the remaining two million-plus unburned tires to an EPA-approved landfill, and to
     develop a plan to remove and properly dispose of the burned tires.  Removal of the
     unburned tires began on May 4, 1999, the day after EPA issued the order and finalized the
     agreement.

     In Nevada, EPA ordered Clark County and Republic Industries to stop pollution from the Sunrise Mountain Landfill from entering Las Vegas Wash, a tributary of Lake Mead, which is a drinking water source for three states.  The order also requires installation of a final, impermeable cover on the landfill, gas monitoring to reduce the risk of explosion, and monitoring to protect groundwater from contaminated leachate.

     On Indian lands, EPA won a $90,000 penalty from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
     (BIA) for hazardous waste storage violations on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in
     California.  In addition to paying the penalty, BIA must perform all necessary cleanup
     measures.  In a second case, BIA's Fort Defiance Agency in Arizona paid a $5,000
     penalty for hazardous waste violations on Navajo Nation lands. BIA was also required to
     provide training to the Navajo Nation, through schools and community outreach meetings, on   compliance with solid and hazardous waste regulations, at an estimated cost of $25,000.

          In Hawaii, EPA and the Hawaii Department of Health won a $900,000 settlement from
     Maui County in a court action against the county for hundreds of sewage spills.  Maui
     County agreed to institute maintenance procedures to prevent future sewage spills,
     undertake a $600,000 project to extend the use of reclaimed water for irrigation, and pay
     a $300,000 penalty.

National Enforcement Highlights

     Nationally, during Fiscal Year 1999, EPA settled the largest Clean Air Case in history against seven diesel engine manufacturers whose products were alleged by the government to have caused millions of tons of excess emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOX), a contributor to smog, into the atmosphere.  Under the settlement, the companies will spend over $800 million on producing cleaner engines and pay an $83 million penalty.  Future NOX emissions will be reduced by more than 75 million tons over the next quarter century.  During FY 1999, the Agency also settled the largest ever civil complaint under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act against the FMC Corporation.  The settlement included an $11.8 million civil penalty and an estimated $170 million to close hazardous-waste containing ponds and significantly reduce toxic gas emissions.

     The Agency referred 403 civil cases to the U.S. Department of Justice   down slightly from the 411 referrals the previous year   and issued a record 1,654 administrative complaints, as well as 1,878 administrative compliance orders and field citations.  The $3.6 billion value of enforcement settlements included $3.4 billion in injunctive relief actions required to correct violations and cleanup Superfund sites   and $236.8 million in Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) additional environmental improvements contained in settlements.

     The 208 years of criminal sentences imposed by the courts in FY 1999 was about 12 years higher than the previous record for incarceration. EPA last year referred 241 criminal cases for prosecution compared with 266 referrals the previous year and assessed $61.6 million in criminal fines compared with $92.3 million the previous year.  Taken together, the combined civil and criminal referrals are the third largest in EPA history and the combined amount of civil and criminal penalties is the second largest in EPA history.  The Agency also recovered from responsible parties an estimated $230 million to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites under the Superfund program.

   EPA also conducted 716 investigations in FY 1999.  Investigations are more complex and intensive assessments of a facility's compliance status, and are designed to detect more serious environmental violations with significant environmental impact.

Compliance Assistance  
 
     In addition to its formal enforcement activities, EPA continued to expand its use of incentives to achieve industry compliance with environmental laws while promoting the public's right to know.  The Agency reported that in FY 1999 approximately 260 companies disclosed potential violations at over 950 facilities under the auspices of EPA's self-disclosure policy.  A total of 106 companies corrected violations at 624 facilities this past year, a significant increase over the 63 companies that corrected violations at 390 facilities in FY 1998.  

     The Agency also negotiated a voluntary audit compliance program with the pork-producing industry in FY 1999, which may result in self audits of as many as 10,000 facilities over the next several years.  Another 60 businesses disclosed violations under the auspices of EPA's small business self-disclosure policy, a six-fold increase from the previous year.  EPA also continued to implement its reforms to speed up the pace of Superfund cleanups by making the process fairer and more efficient.  In FY 1999, the Agency negotiated 38 "de minimus" settlements with over 3,700 small waste generators to limit their potential exposure to third-party suits.

     EPA's enforcement actions reduced emissions or discharges of pollutants, many of them toxic or hazardous.  Among the major reductions were:  nitrogen oxides, a major ingredient in the formation of smog, by over 5.8 billion pounds; asbestos, a carcinogen, by over 19 million lbs.; sulphur dioxide, which produces acid rain, by over 19 million lbs., volatile organic compounds, another major ingredient in smog, by over 6 million lbs., carbon dioxide, the chief global warming gas, by over 4 million lbs; and PCB's, another carcinogen, by over 3.3 million lbs.
   
     EPA last year opened four new Compliance Assistance Centers for the paints and coatings industry, transportation industry, small and medium-sized chemical manufacturers, and local government agencies.  Each center offers interactive web sites, telephone assistance lines, document fax-back systems and e-mail discussion groups.  The centers are part of the Clinton Administration's sweeping efforts to reinvent government to make it work better and cost less.  There are now a total of nine compliance centers on-line for industry and the public.

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