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NEW JERSEY PAINT MANUFACTURER AND COMPANY PLEAD GUILTY TO HAZARDOUS WASTE CRIMES
Release Date: 03/30/2000
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FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 2000
NEW JERSEY PAINT MANUFACTURER AND COMPANY
PLEAD GUILTY TO HAZARDOUS WASTE CRIMES
PLEAD GUILTY TO HAZARDOUS WASTE CRIMES
William Moskowitz of Lakewood, N.J., president of Sav-Cote Chemical Laboratories Inc., and Sav-Cote were sentenced on March 21, in U.S. District Court in Trenton. Moscowitz and Sav-Cote previously pleaded guilty to seven counts of illegally storing and disposing of hazardous wastes in violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Moscowitz was ordered to pay a $60,000 fine, pay EPA $607,514 in cleanup costs, and serve six months home confinement and five years probation. Sav-Cote was fined $2,000 and ordered to serve five years probation. In a previous guilty plea, Moskowitz and Sav-Cote admitted that beginning in the late 1980s they illegally stored hazardous paint solvents including xylene, toluene and methyl ethyl ketone without a permit in eight underground storage tanks, two of which were leaking. In 1998, EPA began a Superfund cleanup at Sav-Cote’s Lakewood facility after an EPA Criminal Investigation uncovered the illegal storage. The case was investigated by EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, and the FBI with the assistance of the EPA Region 2 Laboratory in Edison, N.J. The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Trenton, New Jersey.
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