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Richmond-Area Company Pleads Guilty and Pays $500,000 for Clean Water Act Crimes

Release Date: 6/21/2001
Contact Information: Donna Heron, (215) 814-5113

Donna Heron, (215) 814-5113

RICHMOND – On June 20, 2001, in federal district court in Richmond, Va., Rehrig International, Inc. pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act and was sentenced to pay $500,000 for fines, pollution prevention improvements at its plant, and a community service contribution.

Two days earlier, the company’s environmental compliance supervisor, J. Gregory Dant, was sentenced to six months of home confinement, with weekends in jail for 120 days, and ordered to pay a fine of $7,500 after he pleaded guilty to a related Clean Water Act offense.

Rehrig is one of the country’s largest manufacturers of shopping carts and baskets, supplying retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Safeway Supermarkets. The company’s production process includes metal plating -- coating shopping cart chassis with nickel and chromium -- which generates wastewater containing those metals and other pollutants. Rehrig operated in the City of Richmond throughout the 1990s, and had a Clean Water Act permit from the city to discharge its wastewater to the sewer system after pretreating the waste to ensure that pollutant levels were below permit limits. City sewers run to a municipal treatment plant that discharges into the James River.

Rehrig admitted in its plea that in 1998, the company violated its permit numerous times by discharging excessive amounts of nickel and chromium. The city issued Rehrig several citations, and in December found Rehrig in “significant non-compliance” with its permit. In early 1999, Rehrig pledged to dedicate additional resources to wastewater treatment, and promised not to place supervision of its wastewater treatment operators “in the hands of someone whose agenda is elsewhere.”

Rehrig/Dant - 6/21/01
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Despite this, Rehrig continued to periodically violate its permit. Moreover, in the course of its move to a new site in neighboring Chesterfield County, Rehrig pulled Dant from Richmond, where shopping carts continued to be produced around-the-clock, and assigned him to work primarily at the new facility.

On June 10, 1999, Rehrig discharged chromium into city sewers in amounts approximately 30 times the permit limits, and nickel in amounts six times the permit limits. The company later acknowledged that this discharge occurred because the shift supervisor who was attempting to cover for an absent wastewater treatment operator “could not dedicate adequate time to watching the pretreatment system in addition to his regular duties.” In late September 1999, after additional permit violations by Rehrig and additional citations by the city, Rehrig’s discharges violated its permit on each of five consecutive days.

After Rehrig pleaded guilty to two criminal misdemeanors, the company was sentenced to a fine of $200,000, a $290,000 payment for adding pollution prevention/control equipment at its new plant, and ordered to make a $10,000 contribution to the James River Advisory Council, a group formed to protect the river flowing through Richmond. Rehrig must also submit to the court an environmental compliance program, and its employees must perform 400 hours of community service.

In a related prosecution, Rehrig’s former environmental compliance supervisor, Greg Dant, pleaded guilty to tampering, in late 1998, with a sampler installed to measure Rehrig’s Richmond discharges. Dant opened the sampling machine and replaced the sample jar’s contents with clean tap water, in an attempt to give the appearance that Rehrig’s discharge was cleaner than it actually was. He was sentenced on June 18 to six months of home confinement, with weekends in jail for 120 days, and a fine of $7500. He will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for five years, during which time he must give three speeches on the importance of Clean Water Act compliance to industry managers.

Since the dates of the alleged offenses, Rehrig has fired Dant and replaced its plating manager, plant manager, and vice president for production. Since early 2000, the company has contracted with an environmental consulting firm to perform wastewater treatment, and has operated in substantial compliance with its Chesterfield County Clean Water Act permit.

The case was investigated by EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division and the Defense Criminal Investigation Service, with assistance from Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality and the FBI. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Davis and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Fisher.



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