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Jail Time for Boss Who Ordered Employees to Dump Fracking Waste in Ohio River

Submitted by x363464 on Mon, 08/11/2014 - 17:19

By Andrea Germanos - EcoWatch, August 7, 2014

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The owner of a Youngstown, Ohio-based company was sentenced on Tuesday [August 5, 2014] to more than two years in prison for ordering his employees to repeatedly dump toxic fracking waste into a local waterway.

Between Nov. 1, 2012 and Jan. 31, 2013, employees of Hardrock Excavating LLC, which provided services to the oil and gas industry including storing fracking waste, made over 30 discharges of fracking waste into a tributary of the Mahoning River. Sixty-four-year old Benedict W. Lupo, then-owner of Hardrock Excavating, directed his employees to dump the waste, which included benzene and toluene, under the cover of night into the waterway.

According to reporting by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “employees tried to talk Lupo out of it, but he refused. [The judge] also pointed out a prosecutor’s pictures that detailed six weeks of clean-up in an oil-soaked creek.”

Tags: 
fracking
health and safety
whistleblowers
Clean Water Act
Ohio

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