Criminal charges against Upstate Shredding owner Adam Weitsman have been dismissed, Lt. Thomas Lutz of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said.
Weitsman admitted he was at fault when he drained stormwater from his metal recycling facility during heavy rain on Aug. 30. The contaminated water was drained into a gulley, and a small amount flooded into a bare piece of land in Tioga County's Industrial Park, he said.
The criminal charges were dismissed because Weitsman agreed to a consent order with the DEC, Lutz said. Weitsman will have to build safeguards to prevent the stormwater from coming into contact with pollutants on site.
Weitsman said the consent order with DEC was a "fair" one.
"We're definitely a friend of the environment," he said. "We've been here for 11 years. This is the most environmentally friendly scrap facility in the U.S."
The DEC suspended half of a $50,000 fine because Weitsman will be subject to the remaining $25,000 fine if he doesn't comply with the consent order, Lutz said.
Weitsman also agreed to pay $50,000 to the DEC environmental benefit project, which will aid a handicapped-accessible entrance at a fishing site where the Owego Creek and Susquehanna River meet in the Village of Owego, said Jeff Soules, superintendent of Public Works.
On Aug. 30, Weitsman dug ditches to divert a mixture of water and chemicals to a gulley on his property. He said there was no criminal intent. "This incident happened when we had the bad flood, and I had to divert the water before the water (touched) our transformer," he said. "It happened so fast because the water came up and it was one of those calls."
According to court documents, the chemicals present included trimethylbenzene, common in petroleum products, and polychlorinated biphenyls, used in industrial and commercial businesses.
Weitsman said he cleaned up the contaminated material within 24 hours.
Later in October, the DEC collected samples from the monitoring wells at the facility, and tests did not reveal any violations of groundwater standards, said Mary Jane Peachey, regional engineer of the DEC.
Weitsman paid the fine on March 28, when the charges were dismissed in Town of Owego court. He is in the process of completing a multi-million-dollar stormwater treatment plant and enclosing his facility with a 65-foot building to cover the scrap metal. The plant will remove chemicals from the water runoff from the facility's 17 acres of concrete before releasing it into the environment, Weitsman previously said in a Press & Sun-Bulletin article.
"When we had the flood, the water went over the concrete," he said.
Upstate Shredding recycles vehicles plus appliances, 360,000 tons of steel per year and 52 million pounds of aluminum per year, Weitsman said. Press & Sun (New York) Bulletin