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Former Owner of Pennsylvania Textile Company Sentenced for Hazardous Waste Storage Violations

Release Date: 5/2/2003
Contact Information: Donna Heron, 215-814-5113

Donna Heron, 215-814-5113

PHILADELPHIA – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania today announced the sentencing of Myron H. Feldman, 71, a part-owner of Pennsylvania Textile Corp. (“Penn-Tex”) of West Hazleton, Pa., for criminal violations of federal hazardous waste laws.

Mr. Feldman, a resident of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., was sentenced today to six months of home confinement with electronic monitoring and five years probation. He was also ordered to pay a $3,000 fine and to pay $230,857 in restitution to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for the state’s cleanup of the facility. Mr. Feldman was ordered to pay $25,000 today and the remainder in monthly payments of $2,500.

Mr. Feldman pleaded guilty on Dec.16, 2002 to storing hazardous waste without a required permit at his textile manufacturing plant in West Hazelton, Pa., which ceased operating in May 1998. According to the government, Mr. Feldman caused a trailer containing drums of fabric water-proofing chemicals to be transported from another plant to the Penn-Tex facility, where the trailer and drums sat unused and deteriorating for years. Laboratory analysis revealed that 67 of the 85 drums in the trailer contained ignitable hazardous waste. Mr. Feldman was also charged with abandoning almost 400 drums and other containers of unusable chemicals after the closing of the Penn-Tex plant. A number of these drums contained hazardous waste.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection conducted a $230,857 cleanup at the Penn-Tex facility in 1999.