GOWANUS — A cesspool service company that repeatedly dumped sewage into the Gowanus Canal and other sites has paid $900,000 in penalties after pleading guilty to violating the Clean Water Act, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Queens-based A&L Cesspool Service Corporation took sewage out of blocked sewer lines and dumped it down manholes that fed directly into the much-abused canal, according to prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of New York.
The company had a permit from the city's Department of Environmental Protection that allowed it to dump sewage at wastewater treatment facilities, but instead of following the permit's rules, A&L took liquid waste from clogged sewer lines and disposed of it under manhole covers at JFK Airport, Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, a public housing complex in Brooklyn and in the Gowanus Canal, prosecutors said.
"Environmental laws, such as those violated by A&L Cesspool, are put in place to protect us from grossly negligent practices that threaten the cleanliness of our communities and put the public’s health at risk," said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney, Jr. "Circumventing procedures to properly dispose of pollutants is a serious crime, and those who engage in this type of activity won’t get away with it."
An employee who answered the phone at A&L declined to comment. A&L clears drains, empties grease traps, and uses a fleet of high-powered vacuum trucks that can slurp up 3,500 gallons of "your dirtiest, smelliest sewage waste," according to the company's website.
The company pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the Clean Water Act, one count of unlawfully discharging pollutants into a waterway of the United States without a permit (in this case, the Gowanus Canal) and four counts of illegally dumping pumped sewer waste in violation of its permit, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
A&L will pay a $375,000 fine, hand over $350,000 in criminal forfeiture and also make a $175,000 "community service payment" to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for projects that must directly benefit the Gowanus area, prosecutors said.
The Gowanus Canal was once lined with factories that used the waterway as their personal garbage bin. Many are gone now but some industrial businesses still use the canal for their operations, and some have been fined in recent years for violating environmental laws.
Polluters may seem to be mostly in the canal's past, but they play a key role in its future. Under Superfund laws, the companies or entities that once dumped waste into the canal (or their modern day owners) will pay for the canal's $506 million cleanup. The City of New York and National Grid are the two biggest polluters of the canal, according to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency.
Sewage is of course nothing new in the canal. Every time there's a heavy rain in the city, untreated sewage flows into the canal from 10 "combined sewage overflow" pipes along the 1.8-mile waterway.
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