IPC was sentenced on Feb. 2 in U.S. District Court for the "environmental crimes," the EPA said in the release.
Court documents said that from 1992 to 2012, IPC ran a facility in Wilmington that processed used oil and hydrocarbon-containing waste water. The reprocessed petroleum was then sold to various companies to be reused.
“The facility had two components: oil recovery and waste water treatment,” EPA said. “The facility’s petroleum processing activities generated waste water, which the company treated at its waste water portion of the facility prior to discharge into a sewer along Market Street owned by the city. It issued IPC a federally enforceable Clean Water Act pretreatment permit which governed the types and concentrations of pollutants which IPC could discharge into the City’s sewer system.”
The pretreatment permit required IPC to sample the waste water monthly to determine if it was complying with its permit limitations and report its sampling results the city every six months, the release said. IPC admitted it tampered with monitoring methods and a monitoring device, the release said.
IPC also admitted it transported hazardous waste without a hazardous waste manifest to South Carolina for disposal, the EPA said in the release. The sludge IPC removed from its storage tanks for disposal contained chemicals that included benzene, barium, chromium, lead and tetrachloroethene, the release said.
“Industrial wastewater can pose serious threats to public health and the environment, so it’s imperative that companies honestly treat and dispose of it properly and sample and report pollutant concentrations honestly,” Charles Oberly III, U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware, said in the release.
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