Hartford City scrap yard fined $60,000

INDIANAPOLIS (Scrap Monster):  Hartford Iron & Metal has been fined $60,000 and ordered to stop discharging PCB-contaminated stormwater into the city's sewers.

Carol Comer, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, issued the order after the scrap yard, which has been operating since 1922, declined an offer to enter into an agreed order to settle the violations.

The Division Street scrap yard admittedly allowed stormwater contaminated with PCBs to run off the property into the street and down a sewer drain 18 times since 2012.

Mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are the two main contaminants that accumulate in Indiana's fish. PCBs are man-made chemicals used for insulating electrical parts, lubricating machine parts, paints and much more before being banned in the 1980s.

Hartford Iron & Metal's Scott Goldberg referred Star Press questions to his attorney, Mark Shere, who could not be reached for comment. The company and its insurance company have been battling in federal court in Indianapolis.

In a letter to IDEM dated Jan. 21, Shere reported that insurance contractor August Mack Environmental (AME) as well as the CNA group of insurance companies constructed and operated a "seriously defective" stormwater collection and treatment system at the site. Hartford Iron was insured by the CNA group.

"By design, this system discharges untreated PCB-contaminated storm water into two residential streets, where the storm water undergoes initial and ineffective treatment through dilution," Shere wrote. "The system then uses mechanical pumps to fight gravity and lift the diluted storm water into a tank farm storage/sedimentation system immediately adjacent to the street."

AME also continues to use an unlined gravel pit to divert portions of the contaminated stormwater into soil and groundwater, Shere alleged.

"Please do not be misled by unsupported correspondence from AME's lawyers trying to defend their defective system," Shere wrote.

An expert Indianapolis-based stormwater consultant, KERAMIDA, reportedly informed CNA about the defects in the system two years ago and has created a plan to intercept the scrap yard's stormwater before it leaves the site.

However, without cooperation from CNA, attempts to start construction of the new system "are only likely to make the situation worse," Shere said.

AME's lawyer, Todd Relue, says AME inherited the current runoff-collection system from Hartford Iron's former environmental contractor, HydroTech.

While AME has created numerous proposals to improve the system and Valley Forge Insurance has approved funding for them, very few of the proposals have proceeded because Hartford Iron has denied site access and/or refused to permit any activity that would create, store or dispose of wastes, according to Relue.

As for the unlined gravel pit, that is actually a 4,000-gallon sump pit that AME proposed and Hartford Iron agreed to in 2013 to provide more protection against stormwater runoff, Relue says

While excavating the pit in October of 2014, a sewer line was encountered 17 feet away from where the city of Hartford City said it was located, according to Relue.

As a result, AME reportedly proposed three alternate options to complete the pit but Hartford Iron refused to give AME site access to complete the sump installation. AME repaired the sewer line and backfilled the open excavation, Relue told IDEM.

Courtesy: www. thestarpress.com