Two West Oahu nonprofits will receive $100,000 each under the terms of a plea agreement reached between federal prosecutors and Waste Management of Hawaii to settle a case involving the spillage of millions of gallons of contaminated stormwater from the island’s only landfill into the ocean several years ago.
U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway finalized the settlement Monday during sentencing.
Federal prosecutors agreed to drop more serious felony charges against Waste Management and top employees Joe Whelan and Justin Lottig in exchange for their guilty pleas to misdemeanor counts of negligent discharge of pollutants for violating the U.S. Clean Water Act.
The company and the two company officials were served a 13-count indictment last year following the 2010-2011 incidents at Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill. The indictment charged the company and the men with knowingly violating the Clean Water Act and then conspiring to make false statements to the state Health Department.
Were they convicted of those felonies, Waste Management would have faced a maximum penalty of $500,000 per count, while Whelan and Lottig would have faced prison terms.
As a result of the plea agreement, however, Mollway ordered Waste Management to pay a fine of $400,000 and restitution of $100,000 each to the Ko Olina Community Association and the Malama Learning Center for “implementation of water quality monitoring and erosion control projects.”
Whelan, a former Waste Management vice president who was the landfill’s general manager when the spill occurred, and Lottig, then the landfill’s environmental protection manager, will each pay a fine of $25,000.
“We’re glad that this chapter is over,” Waste Management attorney William McCorriston said after Monday’s hearing. “We’re confident that the diversion channel in place now is state of the art and can handle any storm that might come within the next hundred years or so.”
The case stems from violations that occurred Dec. 19, 2010, and Jan. 12-13, 2011. U.S. attorneys said Waste Management had its contractor pump contaminated stormwater from the landfill cell E-6 “into an open manhole of a large pipe that ultimately flowed to three outfall pipes that discharged to Hawaii’s coastal waters.”
After the hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated stormwater moved down from the landfill, raw sewage, sewage sludge, blood vials and syringes were among the things that washed up along the beaches at Ko Olina Resort and elsewhere along the Waianae Coast.
Attorneys for the company and the two men said they acted heroically in their efforts to stop what would have been disasters by diverting the polluted water away from Hawaiian Electric Co.’s Kahe Point Power Plant next door.
Waste Management continues to run the landfill under contract with the city. Whelan retired several months ago and is relocating to the mainland. Lottig will soon leave Waste Management and has already moved to the mainland.
Throughout the case, McCorriston insisted that Waste Management was well on its way toward making the improvements that would have prevented the spills from occurring, and he said politics caused those improvements from being implemented.
“Unfortunately, we were just a few weeks away from having it done before these storms hit,” McCorriston said after Monday’s hearing. “It’s an accident of history but hopefully one that won’t repeat itself.”
Joachim Cox, Whelan’s attorney, said his client was “forced to make a very difficult decision in moving forward. He’s glad to have this case behind him. His interests were always in support of the environment; his interests were always in support of Hawaii.”
Addison Bonner, an attorney for the law firm Hosoda & Morikone, said Lottig and his family are also glad to put a “painful chapter” behind them.
