The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that General Electric Co., has agreed to pay a $2.25 million penalty for releasing unsafe levels of air pollution from a waste incinerator at its former plant in Waterford, N.Y., and submitting false pollution control records, violating its air pollution permits.
A settlement and complaint released by the department revealed that GE, which owned the plant from 1947 to 2006 and operated it through 2007, had its employees manually override the automatic waste feed cutoff system nearly 1,900 times between September 2006 and February 2007, according to ABC News.
"GE used a computer program to override the incinerator's automatic waste feed cut-off system, allowing GE to continue to burn hazardous waste in the incinerator in violation of its (air pollution) permits. On at least 1,859 occasions during the period of September 2006 until February 2007, GE employees manually overrode the automatic waste feed cut-off system, thereby potentially exposing the public and the environment to harmful hazardous air pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, dioxins, and furans. Though its employees were violating federal and state law, GE submitted routine compliance reports to the United States and the state of New York falsely attesting to compliance ...," a press release from the department read.
GE had control of the plant until 2006 and ceased control of operations in 2007. Momentive Performance Materials is now the owner and operator of the plant, according to CNBC.
The settlement reveals what the cause of an early morning raid of the plant on June 30, 2009, was about, reported the Time Union. Federal and state officials came in and remained on the plant grounds for most of the day, but the cause of the raid wasn't made public until GE's settlement was announced.
GE appears to be content with the result of the lawsuit and resulting settlement, with spokesperson David Lurie calling the outcome "reasonable," and noted that no excess air pollution was documented.
