Curtis Bay medical waste incinerator fined $1M for environmental crimes

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown announced a $1 million criminal penalty Tuesday against a medical waste incinerator near Baltimore’s Curtis Bay neighborhood.

The fine against Curtis Bay Energy LP is one of the largest ever levied in a criminal environmental case brought by the Attorney General’s Office, Brown said.

The company agreed to plead guilty to 40 charges related to environmental violations, including failing to properly burn medical waste before dumping it at landfills.

“Our evidence shows that they knew they were failing to do what they were required to do,” Brown said at a news conference. “They failed, and they were caught.”

The incinerator, located in an industrial area at 3200 Hawkins Point Rd., was sold to a new owner in 2021, after the violations took place, according to court documents.

In a written statement, the company said it has “fully cooperated with the state of Maryland’s investigation into past violations committed by employees under prior ownership and management of the company.”

“Since acquiring the company, new ownership and facility management have significantly increased investments in plant equipment, personnel, process improvements and training,” said Kelly Love, a representative of the company.

The director of plant operations at the time of the violations, Kenneth T. Jackson, was also charged with breaking environmental laws. He agreed to plead guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended, and a $20,000 fine, court records show.

The primary charges against the company involve the processing of medical waste, which comes from hospitals and laboratories and is handled separately from regular waste because it could transmit disease.

Medical waste is supposed to be incinerated or sanitized before it can be disposed at a landfill. An investigation by the Attorney General’s Office’s Environmental Crimes Unit found that Curtis Bay Energy was overloading its incinerators in an effort to burn more waste, resulting in some items not being fully burned.

The resulting mixture of ash and waste materials was carted to landfills anyway, the investigation found.

“Former and current employees interviewed by ECU described regularly seeing partially combusted special medical waste, including red bags, surgical gloves, medical supplies, bedding and other forms of special medical waste mixed with ash and fully combusted materials on the ash pad, where the materials were staged for loading and transportation to a landfill,” the Attorney General’s Office wrote in a statement of facts against the company.

Company records showed references to unburned medical waste on 108 separate occasions between October 2019 and March 2020, according to the statement. The company also could not provide records for significant parts of that time.

Investigators with the ECU and with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division conducted surveillance at the facility in February and March of 2020, following a container of ash from the site to a landfill in Virginia.

The container leaked an unknown fluid during the entire trip to Virginia, according to the investigators, and the waste left behind at the landfill included unburned medical waste. The landfill repeatedly rejected loads of ash for containing unburned medical waste over the next few weeks.

The investigation found that Curtis Bay Energy processed significantly more waste in 2019 than in 2018, and that corporate leaders were in daily communication with plant management about the amount of waste being processed and the profit per pound of waste, according to the statement of facts.

As part of the plea agreement, the company agreed to pay a $1 million fine, which will go to the Maryland Clean Water Fund, and to complete two years of probation.

The company must also pay $750,000 for a “supplemental environmental project” to benefit the Curtis Bay community. The Chesapeake Bay Trust will hold the money and distribute grants to organizations that will aid the environment or public health.

The agreement is signed by Charles Veniez, president and CEO of Curtis Bay Energy.

The medical waste incinerator has long been a source of concern for community members in Curtis Bay, which is home to dozens of industrial sites.

Tuesday’s announcement also included the criminal charges and plea agreement for Jackson, who was director of plant operations at the facility. The statement of facts against Jackson charged that he oversaw the installation of an illegal sump pump and hose system to drain leaking water away from a building that housed condenser units.

All wastewater from the facility is supposed to be collected in holding tanks and then hauled to an offsite treatment plant because the site is not connected to municipal sewer service. The leaking water was redirected with a hose and dumped onto an adjacent property owned by the state of Maryland, according to the statement of facts.

Employees removed the illegal pump system when environmental inspectors came to the site, the investigation found. Criminal charges are also pending against another employee.

A lawyer for Jackson could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.