A North Carolina used oil recycling business and its owner plead guilty to unlawful handling of PCB-contaminated used oil and other crimes today. Benjamin Franklin Pass, 60, and P&W Waste Oil Services Inc. of Wilmington, N.C., pleaded guilty in federal court in the Eastern District of North Carolina for violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act, as well as for making false statements and failing to pay several years of taxes.
The defendants admitted to, among other things, the unlawful handling of a toxic substance that resulted in widespread contamination, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The P&W facility in Leland, NC, included a tank farm consisting of multiple tanks ranging from 20,000 gallons to 500,000 gallons. The tank farm is located 500 feet east of the Cape Fear River and a federally recognized wetland.
As part of its business operations, P&W transported, processed and marketed used oil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). P&W received the used oil from small and large companies, including automotive service stations, transformer repair companies and marinas. P&W also conducted tank cleaning and waste removal.
According to the charges filed in federal court in Raleigh, NC, and information stated in open court, the defendants knowingly failed to comply with regulations covering PCB-contaminated used oil by unlawfully transporting, storing and disposing of used oil contaminated with PCBs.
During July 2009, an employee transported waste oil containing fluid from five PCB transformers from a site in Wallace, S.C., to the P&W facility. The investigation revealed that the waste oil was contaminated with PCB concentrations in excess of 500 parts per million.
“PCBs are well known to pose substantial risks to human health and the environment and must be handled responsibly and lawfully,” said Robert G. Dreher, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division.
Despite knowledge of the investigation into the defendants’ illegal handling of PCB-contaminated used oil, Pass and an employee of P&W – at Pass’ direction – continued to dilute unlawfully the contaminated used oil. The mishandling of the PCB-contaminated used oil resulted in the widespread contamination at the site and other sites, resulting in millions of dollars in cleanup costs.
PCBs pose such an unreasonable risk of injury to human health and the environment that effective 1 January 1978, Congress banned the production of PCBs and mandated that no person may distribute in commerce, or use any PCBs other than in a totally enclosed manner. The law directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue rules phasing out the manufacture of PCBs and regulating their disposal.
As part of the plea agreements, Pass agreed to pay $538,587, plus interest, in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.
P&W agreed to pay restitution of $19 million as compensation to Colonial Oil and International Paper for the costs associated with the storage and proper disposal of PCB-contaminated used oil as well as any monetary losses coming from the illegal handling, storage and transportation of toxic substances. P&W also agreed to five-years’ probation and to take remedial action to address environmental contamination at its facility in eastern NC and other leased properties, including the proper treatment and/or disposal of PCB-contaminated waste oil.
Currently, efforts are underway to clean up the contamination at P&W’s facility in Leland, an EPA Superfund site. Superfund is the name given to the federal environmental program established to clean up the nation’s uncontrolled hazardous waste sites after the companies that caused the problem used bankruptcy or other legal schemes to avoid paying for the cleanup, passing the costs on to taxpayers.
