DOJ Sentences Eagle Recycling for Violating Clean Water Act

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has sentenced New Jersey-based Lieze Associates, dba Eagle Recycling, in federal court in Utica, N.Y., following the company’s guilty plea for conspiring to violate the Clean Water Act and to defrauding the United States.

According to the DOJ, Eagle Recycling was sentenced to pay a $500,000 criminal fine and more than $70,000 in restitution and cleanup costs. The judge also imposed three years corporate probation and ordered that Eagle Recycling’s recycling facility formulate, fund and implement an environmental compliance plan to prevent future environmental violations at their North Bergen, N.J ., operation. 

According to the charges and plea agreement, Eagle Recycling and other co-conspirators engaged in a multi-year scheme to illegally dump 8,100 tons of pulverized construction and demolition debris that was processed at Eagle Recycling’s North Bergen solid waste management facility and then transported to a farmer’s property in Frankfort, N.Y. The DOJ notes that Eagle Recycling and other conspirators concealed the illegal dumping by fabricating a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation permit and forging the name of a DEC official on the fraudulent permit.

This case was investigated by criminal investigators with the NYS Environmental Conservation Police, Bureau of Environmental Crimes; special agents from the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division and the Internal Revenue Service; and investigators from the New Jersey State Police Office of Business Integrity Unit, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Ohio Department of Environmental Protection.