Pa. man, company accused of dumping gas wastewater (AP)

Thursday, March 17, 2011 4:01 PM By dwi

HOLBROOK, Pa. – A university squander hauler and his consort were springy weekday with mountain of malefactor counts for what prosecutors said was eld of dumping jillions of gallons of squander liquid from uncolored pedal drilling, squander gook and edifice oil into streams and mine shafts.

The university professional general's duty filed 98 malefactor counts against parliamentarian Allan Shipman, 49, and 77 counts against his company, Allan's Waste Water Service Inc.

Prosecutors said Holbrook told his drivers to unstoppered valves at uncolored pedal production wells, ofttimes at period or during rainstorms, so the wastewater would separate into nearby waterways. He also is accused of informing drivers to dump the table of their trucks into a story pipage that led directly to a nearby stream.

The charges become as environmentalists improve concerns that the uncolored pedal production festinate comprehensive university is infectious rivers and aquifers that cater crapulence liquid around the state.

At supply is the liquid produced by production and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of pedal wells and how it's disposed. The jillions of gallons that become up from the wells are intensely salt and rotten with barium, strontium, radium, and toxic chemicals utilised in fracking.

"This was a calculated and long-running plot to personally profit by illicitly dumping wastewater, regardless of the possibleness for environmental damage," said acting Attorney General Bill Ryan. Prosecutors said the dumping took place between 2003 and 2009.

A spokesman for the professional general's office, Nils Frederiksen, said prosecutors are destined the dumping caused inauspicious environmental impact, but that it can be difficult to connect it to limited incidents.

Shipman was springy with participating in a debased organization, theft, forgery, pollution of waters, tampering with open records, violating the state's Clean Streams Law, Solid Waste Management Act and the Fish and Boat codes, and another counts.

He allegedly overbilled his customers by more than $250,000.

His lawyer, Christopher Blackwell, said Shipman denies all of the malefactor allegations against him. Blackwell said the noble jury enquiry began most a assemblage ago and that Shipman has provided prosecutors with nearly all of his playing records from the eld involved.

"On our side module be probably 20 drivers to testify, both past and underway drivers, to declare Allan never told them to do anything like that," Blackwell said. "That was not a playing duty they were ever asked to perform. The drivers that are making the accusations seem to be discontent ex-drivers who seem to have an ax to grind with Mr. Shipman."

Blackwell said Shipman and his wife own the company. Shipman was free after bill $500,000 bail.

The noble jury inform said the consort hauled gook from squander treatment plants, oil liquid from restaurants and fast-food chains that can't be dispatched to normal squander systems, and the squander liquid produced by wells drilled into the Marcellus Shale uncolored pedal formation.

The southward crossway of university is among the most intensely drilled regions in the Marcellus pedal production rush.

Investigators accused Shipman's consort of illicitly dumping squander at individual locations, including a brine effort substantially titled moneyman Run that had become low investigating for sagging section and doable environmental problems.

In 2009, the EPA fined the well's owner, Consol Energy of Canonsburg, Pa., $158,000 for imperfectness to ready gates locked or properly index the trucks reaching and feat from the site. agent inspectors also upraised concerns most the table of the squander existence dumped, saying they suspected squander was illicitly existence additional to the mix of fluids.

State regulators asked the EPA to shut down the substantially in 2009 after a nearby waterway, Dunkard Creek, dead overturned salty, feeding an protoctist bloom that choked soured life and killed fish in a 30-mile stretch. Its drive has not been conclusively identified.

Shipman has also been accused of dumping into a way that feeds Dunkard Creek.

Ken Dufalla, chair of the Izaak author League of USA chapter in author County, said deteriorating liquid calibre in Dunkard Creek and another tributaries of the river River in that Atlantic have led some topical anglers to conclude there staleness be banned dumping feat on.

"If there's a bourgeois dumping in his backwards yard, if it's true, it is utterly outrageous, because we all springy here," said Dufalla, whose conservation assemble has grown from 19 members to 101 in the past year, largely driven by concerns over the Marcellus humate drilling.

"If he is proven guilty, then shame on him. If he is not guilty, then good for him. But it is disappointing that a topical individual, if participating in this, would do much a thing, because he's our neighbor. And it hurts, to be open with you."

The company's lawyer, Christopher M. Capozzi, said he was still reviewing the noble jury inform that was issued with the charges, but noted they did not attain limited claims of environmental damage.

"I didn't wager some allegations to that effect," Capozzi said. "So it seems to me, if that was a concern, the professional general's duty would have mentioned it."

Prosecutors said that Shipman routinely told his drivers to consortium squander touchable into a "cocktail" to help conceal its ingredients and to falsely increase the intensity of hauled touchable for billing purposes.

The presentment said a municipal squander authority, concerned that Allan's Waste Water Service was illicitly dumping gook in author County, alerted the land Department of Environmental Protection, and the authority contacted the professional general's office.

Katy Gresh, a Pittsburgh-based DEP spokeswoman, said the authority was reviewing the permits issued to Allan's Waste Water Service to handle much material. She declined to interpret on the possibleness environmental effect of the questionable banned dumping.

Court records say the consort is settled in Holbrook, most 60 miles southward of Pittsburgh; Shipman's addresses were traded as Holbrook and New Freeport.


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