"Polluter Pays" Paying Off in Rhode Island - Part 1

By Jamie Rhodes, Rhode Island State Director (Follow Jamie on Twitter - @jrhodes97) Clean Water had an unusual opportunity in 2013. As part of a criminal penalty assessed against Southern Union, the natural gas storage and transportation company, we received $100,000 to develop and implement programs to properly manage mercury. This begs the obvious question, what does a natural gas company have to do with mercury? That question is the beginning of story that has just entered a new chapter. For those that were not subscribing to the Providence Journal back in 2004, let's set the stage. Beginning in 2001, a local company that was owned by Southern Union began updating gas meters in homes throughout Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Part of this process was removal of mercury containing meters. These meters where delivered to a storage facility in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and were supposed to then be disassembled and shipped to appropriate facilities. Mercury, a powerful neurotoxin, can cause damage to the human brain, kidneys and nervous system, and is of particular concern for pregnant women and children due to its effects on childhood development. For most people, the main source of exposure to mercury is through fish consumption where it is concentrated through the food chain. As early as 2002 this system broke down. Southern Union employees continued to bring mercury products to a vacant building in Pawtucket and stored them in various plastic containers and kiddie pools. There was no permit to store hazardous waste at the site and no contract with any company to pick up it up and dispose of it properly. And so the process continued until 2004. In all, the best estimate is that Southern Union illegally stored mercury in a vacant building for 762 days. In September 2004 some neighborhood kids broke in to the dilapidated building. Southern Union had already noted past attempted break-ins and gaps in perimeter fencing, meaning that they had plenty of advance notice that people had been trying to peek inside this abandoned-looking building. What do kids do with containers full of liquid mercury? The break them open and begin to play around with that fascinating metal that stays liquid at room temperatures. Containers were broken and liquid mercury was spread on the building's grounds as well as those of a nearby apartment complex. And there it stood in puddles for three weeks, in a residential neighborhood. Southern Union was charged with two counts of storing hazardous waste without a permit and one count of failing to notify local emergency officials of a hazardous waste spill. After a jury trial, Southern Union was found guilty, in 2008, of illegal storage and was fined $18 million, where the maximum fine was $38.1 million, the equivalent of $50,000 per day for 762 days. This fine was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, where it was overturned on the grounds that the jury did not find that Southern Union guilty for each and every day, and that the judge was not allowed to extrapolate from the jury's findings. The fine was cut to $500,000 by a federal judge in Rhode Island. Which is where Clean Water comes in. Find out more...read part 2 here.