Response from Heritage Environmental to prior EPA violations

Putnam County, Indiana – We’re looking more closely at previous infractions that Heritage Environmental has received tonight.

The location immediately east of Russellville reportedly faced two informal and one official enforcement action, according to EPA documents. Additionally, it claims that it has violated the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and had 12 quarters of non-compliance (RCRA).

The Indiana University Environmental Resilience Institute’s Executive Director, Dr. Gabriel Filippelli, previously outlined the significance of these infractions. He claimed that the environmental release, which he likened to a leak, was an RCRA violation.

However, Heritage Environmental disputed that there was a leak.

Our request for an interview with the EPA was not answered.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management and Heritage Environmental disagreed about the level of detail necessary on a container label during an on-site inspection in 2019, according to Heritage Environmental Executive Vice President Ali Alavi. This dispute led to the infraction.

Alavi sent us the following message:

“The alleged violation relates to a disagreement between Heritage Environmental and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management over the level of detail required on a label for a container that was on-site at the time of the inspection in 2019. We believe the label was in compliance with the regulatory requirements and IDEM disagreed. After a brief negotiation, the parties settled the matter with no admission of a violation rather than litigate. Some news reports stated the alleged violation was associated with a leak at the facility. That is not the case.”

Alavi continued by claiming that it is difficult for the database used to track violations to discern between claims relating to small problems and more significant offenses.

“The ECHO database must be viewed in context. Once an alleged violation has been addressed, it remains to show as open until the agency closes the matter. The official closing of a file often is over a year after the alleged violation has been addressed and a resolution agreed upon by the parties, thus the misleading appearance of a violation extending for multiple quarters when it actually promptly was resolved,” Alavi said.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management was contacted, but we never received a response.