Cumberland trucking firm fined $80K on federal hazardous waste charges

PROVIDENCE – Berkeley Transportation Co. yesterday was fined $80,000 in federal court for illegally shipping hazardous waste from a property in East Greenwich to a trucking depot in Warwick in 2004, U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente announced.
The Cumberland-based company also paid $35,000 in restitution to the R.I. Department of Emergency Management’s Environmental Response Fund. Both penalties were part of a plea agreement the trucking company entered into in December. (READ MORE)
Senior U.S. District Court Judge Ernest C. Torres yesterday placed the company on three years’ probation and ordered it to establish an environmental compliance program that must be approved by the U.S. Probation Office.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Adi Goldstein had said in February – at a hearing during which the company’s president, Bradford Dean, pleaded guilty to two counts of knowingly transporting hazardous waste – that the government could prove Berkeley transported hazardous waste from the former Amaral Street Associates site at 15 Amaral St., East Providence, to the C-Line Transportation depot at 340 Jefferson Blvd., Warwick, late at night on Sept. 10 and 13. The C-Line depot has no permit to receive or store such waste.
The hazardous material was transported in two trailers containing 55-gallon drums, some labeled “corrosive solids,” “do not use” or “segregated waste,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in its announcement. “The trailers themselves were old and unfit for highway use,” the office added. “One of them was missing a wheel and an axle.”
The DEM began an investigation after receiving a report that trailers containing leaking drums had been abandoned at the depot, prosecutors said.
“The proper management, transportation and disposal of hazardous waste and damaged freight by the trucking industry is critical to the safety of our citizens and the environment,” said Michael E. Hubbard, special agent in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division, which investigated the case along with the DEM’s Office of Criminal Investigation.