DEP Fines Westmoreland Waste $75,000

Department of Environmental Protection Southwest Regional Director Ken Bowman announced that DEP has assessed a $75,000 fine against Westmoreland Waste, LLC, Rostraver Township, Westmoreland County, for violations of Act 90, the Waste Transportation Act, and multiple counts of failing to report overweight waste transportation vehicles.

“Aside from causing additional and accelerated damage to our roadways, significantly overweight loads represent a safety hazard to the people who use our highways,” Bowman said. “Since November 2004, DEP and the State Police spent many hours inspecting hundreds of waste trucks that used the Sanitary Landfill.

“These inspections and aggressive enforcement resulted in a significant improvement in the condition of inbound waste traffic to the facility,” Bowman said. “The landfill operator made meaningful changes in business operations, including the dismissal of a scale house employee, and there has been an improvement in compliance with waste regulations.”

In February, State Police Troop B arrested a number of drivers on significant overweight vehicle charges, including one driver who used a parking lot to illegally dump approximately 31,000 pounds of waste in an attempt to avoid an overweight citation. Several of the drivers were also carrying false shipping papers listing legal gross weights.

Further investigation found County Hauling was actively arranging or brokering delivery of the overweight loads to Sanitary Landfill from the transfer stations. As a result, County Hauling was making significant profits by lowering its transportation costs with fewer trips required by violating weight restrictions.

DEP and State Police were able to document a number of occasions when the landfill did not report overweight trash trucks. In March, DEP audited the landfill’s records and found the landfill failed to log 189 overweight trucks and incompletely or inaccurately logged information from an additional 105 overweight loads. A majority of the significantly overweight loads were from long haul companies.

During the April inspections, DEP also discovered that Sanitary Landfill accepted three vehicles without required Act 90 stickers. Two of the vehicles were compactor trucks owned by the Borough of Munhall and the third was a roll off carrier owned by County Hauling.

The Waste Transportation Safety Act mandates a $2,000 civil penalty for landfill operators who accept vehicles without Act 90 stickers. Further investigation and review of landfill records revealed that the three vehicles were accepted regularly over at least the last six months and that the cause of the violations was simply a failure of landfill personnel to adequately monitor inbound traffic.