McWane Pipe Faces Second Pollution Indictment in Six Months

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama, May 28, 2004 (ENS) - A cast iron pipe manufacturer that operates iron foundries across the country has been charged with releasing industrial process wastewater from its Birmingham plant into a creek and lying to state and federal authorities about the discharges.

The 25 count indictment issued late Tuesday by a federal grand jury charges McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company and four of its current and former employees with environmental crimes.

McWane is a Delaware corporation, headquartered in Birmingham. This is the second pollution indictment lodged against a McWane facility within the past six months.

Also charged in the indictment are James Delk, a former vice president and general manager at the McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company, who currently works at a McWane facility in New York.

Named in the indictment are Charles “Barry” Robinson, of Birmingham, vice president for environmental affairs at McWane; Michael Devine, a former plant manager at McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company, who currently works for McWane in New Jersey; and Donald Bills of Birmingham, who is plant engineer at McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company.

The indictment alleges that the company and its employees discharged process wastewater into Avondale Creek through storm drains in violation of the Clean Water Act, exceeding permit limits for oil and grease. The defendants are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States by obstructing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) enforcement of federal environmental laws.

McWane is charged with obstruction of justice for providing false and misleading information to the EPA in April 2000.

One additional person, maintenance man Donald Harbin, a New Jersey resident, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate environmental laws connected with the operation of McWane in Birmingham.

If convicted, the maximum sentence for an individual convicted on the conspiracy or false statement counts is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The Clean Water Act charges carry a fine of $5,000 to $50,000 per day of violation, and imprisonment for up to three years.

For McWane, Inc. the maximum penalty for the conspiracy and Clean Water Act charges is a fine of the greater of $500,000 or $50,000 per day of violation, and probation of five years. On the false statement or obstruction charges, the maximum penalty for McWane, Inc. a fine of $500,000 and 5 years probation.

“These indictments are the result of a long term joint investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Environmental Protection Agency into the waste disposal practices of the McWane Corporation in the Northern District of Alabama," said the FBI agent in charge of the case, Carmen Adams.

On December 15, 2003 in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, a McWane subsidiary known as Atlantic States, and five of its managers were charged with environmental crimes including the pumping of petroleum contaminated wastewater in December 1999, from a cement pit into a stormwater drain that led to the Delaware River, causing an 8.5 mile oily slick on the river.

The weekly discharge, and the subsequent concealment, of between 50 and 100 gallons of petroleum contaminated wastewater from at least July 1996 to September 2002, and other specific instances of larger discharges of water contaminated with asphalt paint and oil into the Delaware River.

Atlantic States is charged with the routine release and concealment of high levels of pollutants into the air, including carbon monoxide, in violation of government permits and in criminal violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

One method alleged in the indictment involved the pre-planned melting of plate and structural steel in a high intensity furnace permitted for melting of scrap iron, with the effect that it produced lower pollution emissions during smoke stack tests and deceived state and federal regulators.

The privately held McWane Inc. and its subsidiary companies are among the largest manufacturers in the world of ductile iron pipe with more than a dozen plants in the United States and Canada. McWane's products are used primarily for municipal and commercial water and sewer installations.