DOJ/EPA：PRASA就15项《清洁水法》重罪plea；罚款$9 million

On June 22, 2006 the U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (PRASA/AAA) agreed to plead guilty to an information charging 15 felony counts for Clean Water Act (CWA) violations — illegal pollutant discharges from nine wastewater treatment plants and five drinking-water plants. Under the plea agreement, PRASA will pay a criminal fine of $9 million — the largest criminal fine ever paid by a utility under the CWA — plus a $1 million civil fine. This note tracks DOJ release 06-enrd_382: plea ≠ final sentence; it is a guilty-plea agreement pending formal imposition by the federal court.

In the parallel civil agreement, PRASA will invest about $1.7 billion in capital improvements (CIPs) and corrective measures at its 61 wastewater treatment plants and collection systems over fifteen years — 145 short-, medium-, and long-term projects (dechlorination, flow-proportional chlorination, equipment repair or replacement, phosphorus removal, among others). The plea also requires nearly $109 million in capital improvements at nine systems, $10 million to correct discharges to the Martín Peña channel, and five years of federal probation. The court may extend probation if PRASA fails to meet the civil consent decree.

DOJ alleges a history of NPDES permit noncompliance, operations-and-maintenance failures, and raw sewage discharges from seven collection systems on the Island. A supplemental environmental project of about $3 million requires connecting at least one community without sanitary sewer service. A San Juan grand jury returned the information the same day; DOJ filed the plea agreement concurrently. USAO-PR and EPA Region 2 led the investigation and case. Primary: justice.gov archives ENRD. Cousin: none. Topic politics.

来源：U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2006/June/06_enrd_382.html