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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- McWane Inc. will pay $3 million to settle charges of falsifying air emissions reports at a cast-iron pipe foundry in Provo, Utah, prosecutors and the company said Wednesday.
The U.S. Justice Department called it the largest criminal fine levied in Utah for an environmental violation.
Wednesday's plea announcement involved a 2000 furnace emissions test used for two annual emissions reports filed by Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Co., a subsidiary of Birmingham, Ala.-based McWane Inc.
An indictment accused the company of feeding pig iron instead of its usual supply of contaminated automobile scrap into the foundry to cover up pollution violations.
The foundry casts water and sewer pipes, fire hydrants and fittings.
"Although Pacific States was prepared to defend the test method at trial, it decided after extensive negotiations that the best interests of its business and the community would be served by an expedient settlement of this lingering matter," McWane said in a statement issued Wednesday to The Associated Press.
The company will remain under scrutiny of three years of probation after pleading guilty to submitting a false emissions test to Utah regulators.
Charles Matlock, a former vice president and general manager at the foundry, also pleaded guilty Wednesday in a federal court in Washington, D.C., to violating the Clean Air Act by manipulating an emission test.
Matlock faces sentencing on May 2.
Other charges were dismissed against Charles "Barry" Robison, McWane's vice president of environmental affairs, in return for his agreement to not appeal his conviction in a separate case for making a false claim to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Wednesday's conviction was the fourth prosecutors have obtained against McWane in the past year for environmental violations, the Justice Department said. In December, McWane was ordered to pay a $5 million fine for discharging industrial waste.
In the Provo case, McWane "engaged in a concerted effort to rig state-required compliance tests, and then to misrepresent repeatedly the level of pollution," Justice Department attorney Sue Ellen Wooldridge said in a statement.
Also weighing in was EPA enforcement administrator Granta Y. Nakayama, who said the conviction sends a message that companies that "put public health and the environment at risk" will be "vigorously" prosecuted.
McWane, a family-owned company, insisted "there was no harm done to our employees, community or the environment, and Pacific States remains one of the cleanest and safest iron foundries in the nation."
Long before the federal investigation began, McWane said it upgraded the Provo foundry's emissions control system, reducing carbon monoxide emissions by 95 percent and volatile organic compounds by nearly half.
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On the Net:
McWane Inc.: http://www.mcwane.com/index.php?page=home
Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Co.: http://www.pscipco.com/
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
