A grand jury in the federal district court in Norfolk, Va., indicted Robert B. Gill and his company DLG Public Utility Corp., Inc. for felony violations of the Clean Water Act.
The indictment charges that Gill and DLG unlawfully operated the company's wastewater treatment facility in Benn's Church, Va., which treats sewage from the Queen Anne's Court housing development.
Under a Clean Water Act permit issued by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), this plant is authorized to discharge treated wastewater into Jones Creek, a tributary of the Pagan River. The permit imposes monthly monitoring requirements and imposes limits on discharges of pollutants including ammonia, fecal coliform, total suspended solids and a biochemical oxygen demand.
The seven-count indictment alleges that the defendants knowingly violated requirements of the plant's Clean Water Act permit by discharging untreated sewage into the Jone River on June 2, 1999; failing to submit monthly water monitoring reports for March, April and May 1999; failing to properly staff and maintain the wastewater plant in May 1999; and failing to respond to DEQ telephone and mail inquiries in May and June 1999.
In a 1996 case, Gill was sentenced in federal court in Norfolk for falsifying laboratory reports required under the Clean Water Act. He was sentenced to 30 days home confinement, fined $2,500, ordered to pay $1,815 in restitution and place on three years probation for submitting false discharge monitoring reports in January 1994.
Gill, then vice president of Gill & Gill Environmental Services, Inc. of Hopewell, Va., sampled water discharges from schools in Isle of Wight County and submited discharge monitoring reports to the Virginia DEQ. Gill pleaded guilty on May 30, 1996, to one count of making a false statement on a discharge monitoring report.
The recent case was investigated by the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division and DEQ.
An indictment is merely a formal accusation and is not itself proof of guilt.
Source: U.S Environmental Protection Agency
