DALLAS, Texas, June 20, 2008 (ENS) – A former employee of Fujicolor’s film developing facility in Terrell, Texas pleaded guilty Wednesday to willfully concealing and covering up a material fact in wastewater discharge reports that must be filed under the federal Clean Water Act. Gerald Lakota admitted to reporting only wastewater samples that were within legal limits and discarding sampling results any that exceeded those limits.
The film finishing process at the facility generated a significant amount of process wastewater that contained silver. The U.S. EPA requires that industry pretreat pollutants such as silver in their wastewater in order to protect local sewers, wastewater treatment plants and the environment.
Silver attaches readily to surfaces and is toxic to aquatic wildlife. This property of silver has driven regulations which limit the concentration of silver that can be discharged into the environment.
According to the plea agreement reached with federal prosecutors, while an employee at Fujicolor Processing, Lakota was responsible for environmental compliance at the plant. His job included preparing and submitting the plant’s wastewater discharge monitoring reports.
The silver used in film processing
is toxic to aquatic wildlife.
(Photo credit unknown)
In order to ensure compliance with the plant’s monthly discharge monitoring reports, Lakota selectively screened or “cherry-picked” samples of the facility’s wastewater effluent, the U.S. Justice Department said. Samples that were out of compliance with the facility’s pretreatment permit for silver were not reported on the Discharge Monitoring Reports as required by the facility’s permit.
By “cherry-picking” the samples, Lakota falsely presented the analysis of the final “good” samples as representative of the facility’s discharge, when he knew this was not true, and created the false impression that the facility was meeting its effluent limits required by the discharge permit.
“Complete and accurate wastewater discharge reports are absolutely necessary to assure compliance with environmental regulations,” said Warren Amburn, special agent in charge of the Dallas Area Office for EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division.
“Violators who submit false reports or bogus data undermine our efforts to protect the public and the environment and they will be vigorously prosecuted,” he said.
Lakota was charged in the Northern District of Texas and pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. He faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and five years of supervised release.
In a related matter, after disclosing the findings of an internal investigation to federal and state officials, Fujicolor pleaded guilty on September 6, 2007, and agreed to pay a $200,000 criminal fine for negligently violating its pretreatment permit at the photo-processing facility in Terrell.
Based on an internal investigation, Fujicolor discovered that from 1999 through July 2002, employees were selectively reporting to the city only test results that fell within permit limits.
Industrial facilities report results to local agencies for permit compliance purposes. Employees would send part of a sample to a laboratory for screening and, if the sample met permit limits, it would be submitted to the city. If a sample did not meet the silver limit, employees would keep collecting samples until they found one that fell within allowable limits.
Fujicolor discovered similar problems at its facilities in New Britain, Connecticut, and Tukwila, Washington.
Even earlier, in July 2002, the city of Terrell fined the facility $105,725 for exceeding its monthly limit for silver, based on samples submitted by the facility.
