Waste management company U.S. Ecology Nevada (USEN) will pay a civil penalty of $185,429 to settle claims of hazardous waste and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) violations at its facility south of Beatty, Nevada, according to a July 17 press release from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA claimed that USEN violated two federal environmental laws: the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
USEN failed to comply with the RCRA by wrapping hazardous debris in materials that were not resistant to degradation, meaning they were at risk of being released in the landfill, according to the EPA.
The company violated TSCA requirements related to PCBs, primarily because the waste management firm had failed to maintain the building in which it stored the highly carcinogenic chemical compounds to “prevent precipitation from coming into contact with the containers of PCB wastes stored inside,” the EPA said.
U.S. Ecology Nevada also used its PCB tanker truck loading pad to consolidate hazardous waste and improperly solidified low-level PCBs that were less than 50 parts per million, the agency said.
The company also failed to label a PCB storage area properly, and did not comply with the one-year disposal and reporting requirements, the EPA said.
U.S. Ecology is owned by Republic Services and has dozens of sites around the United States.
The facility involved in the settlement sits on a 480-acre site roughly 11 miles south of Beatty. It treats, stores, and disposes of hazardous waste, non-hazardous industrial materials, and PCBs, according to a fact sheet from the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection (NDEP).
“Nevada residents should not have to live with the threat of exposure to harmful materials like PCBs and hazardous waste,” EPA Pacific Southwest’s regional administrator, Martha Guzman, said in a statement. “With these enforcement actions, EPA is holding facilities accountable when they fail to follow our nation’s critical chemical safety laws.”
In an emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a spokesperson for Republic Services said the company was pleased to have resolved the matter with the EPA.
What Are PCBs?
PCBs are human-made substances, domestically manufactured since 1929 and used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications.They were banned by the U.S. government in 1979 because they do not break down easily and harm the environment.
They are also widely known to cause cancer as well as other serious non-cancer health conditions that impact the immune system, reproductive system, and nervous system.
While PCBs are banned, their widespread use before the ban meant they entered the air, water, and soil.
Waste from the manufacturing process that involved the cancer-causing chemicals was also often placed in dump sites or landfills, which is why they can still be found worldwide today, according to the EPA.
Additionally, a certain quantity of PCBs at defined concentrations—called “inadvertent PCBs”—are exempt from the ban, the EPA notes.
