Florida Man and Two Pennsylvania Companies Charged in Hazardous Waste Case
Release Date: 09/14/2005
Contact Information:
Contact: Dave Ryan, 202-564-4355 / [email protected]
(9/14/05) On Aug. 25, charges of violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act were unsealed against Joel D. Udell of Boca Raton, Fla., and Pyramid Chemical Sales Co., and Nittany Warehouse LP, two companies Udell owned in Ambler, Pa. The charges were filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In June 2000, the EPA declared Nittany Warehouse a Superfund site and ordered the defendants to clean up numerous containers of hazardous waste. The charges allege that, instead of cleaning up, the defendants illegally shipped some of the waste to the Netherlands and sold some of it to facilities in the United States, falsely claiming it was new, unused product rather than hazardous waste. The government of the Netherlands and the American companies that received the waste paid for its proper disposal. The defendants are each charged with one count of illegally storing hazardous wastes at the Nittany Warehouse from May 1998 to early 2001, four counts of exporting hazardous waste outside the United States without consent of the receiving country, and 10 counts of transporting hazardous waste without manifests and to unpermitted facilities in 2000. The case was investigated by the Philadelphia Office of EPA's Criminal Investigation Division, the Netherlands Ministry of the Environment, the Department of Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and the Borough of Pottstown, Pa. Investigative assistance was provided by EPA's National Enforcement Investigations Center. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania with assistance from EPA's Region 3 criminal enforcement counsel.
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