The Environmental Safety Agency has reached a settlement with United Parcel Services to solve violations of dangerous waste restrictions at additional than 1,100 facilities across 45 states and Puerto Rico, the company said Wednesday.
The consent arrangement with Atlanta-centered UPS resolves a range of alleged violations, together with failure to make land disposal determinations and to carry out right on-web site management of hazardous waste. The corporation has three a long time to achieve compliance throughout 1,160 places and will pay a civil penalty of $5.3 million.
UPS, whose acquainted brown trucks are acknowledged around the globe, generates harmful waste regulated underneath the federal Source Conservation and Restoration Act when a deal containing particular harmful resources is ruined, as perfectly as throughout day-to-working day functions this sort of as upkeep, EPA reported.
“This settlement is an additional instance of EPA’s motivation to safeguarding communities from the risks of hazardous squander,” claimed Larry Starfield, EPA’s performing assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance. The settlement calls for UPS to tackle unlawful actions at all of its amenities and “implement policies that protect against upcoming non-compliance,” Starfield claimed.
UPS spokesperson Lauren Spangler claimed the parcel-shipping assistance has extensive-standing strategies in spot to cope with harmful squander and is taking further steps to increase its procedures.
“The basic safety of our workers and communities, and treatment for our environment are the optimum priorities at UPS,” she stated in an email. “We will keep on to operate with businesses and authorities all around the planet to be certain the protection of our community and the effectively-getting of our personnel and the prospects and communities we provide.”
EPA officers in Texas-based mostly Location 6 entered into a settlement settlement with UPS last calendar year for services in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. Adhering to that settlement, EPA expanded its investigation into other UPS services across the state and discovered similar statements nationwide. UPS services generated, amassed and offered for transportation, cure and/or disposal particular dangerous squander streams, including ignitable, corrosive and acute dangerous wastes, EPA claimed.
UPS has designed compliance procedures at its Area 6 services and has started similar techniques nationwide, EPA reported.
Underneath the settlement, UPS agreed to comply with condition and federal RCRA rules and polices, including much more correct dangerous waste determinations, good staff training and suitable onsite administration of dangerous squander, EPA claimed.
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