Global Waste Recycling removed no debris from its contaminated site during a two-week period last month and resumed the court-mandated cleanup only last week, the state Department of Environmental Management says.
The DEM was prepared to tell Superior Court Judge Netti C. Vogel, in a hearing Friday, about the stoppage, which it attributed to a dispute over paperwork.
But Vogel said she did not have time then to hear the issue -- instead scheduling a session for 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 18 -- and she admonished lawyers for both the DEM and Global Waste.
They were "discourteous," Vogel said, in not giving her notice that they wanted a full hearing rather than the continuances they've received every Friday since January.
The brief session was the latest in months of court appearances on cleanup of the defunct company's 25-acre Colvintown Road site.
Vogel had ordered Global to remove all the debris by Dec. 31, 2002. In January, company officials requested a six-month extension of that deadline, saying they had underestimated the amount of material to be removed. Vogel instead stretched the deadline to Jan. 9, and began hearings to allow Global to make a cast for the extension.
But DEM and Global lawyers agreed out of court that the company would tap its site-closure fund -- totaling more than $200,000 -- to hire as many haulers as possible to remove the remaining debris.
Global accelerated its cleanup, and the DEM halted, indefinitely, its effort to seek court sanctions against Global so long as it continues removing solid waste from the site.
Vogel agreed to keep the Global matter on the court calendar every subsequent Friday afternoon. Global was not required to appear, however, unless there was a problem or the cleanup was completed.
Vogel said the lawyers should have properly informed her that they wanted the hearings to resume Friday. "I had no reason to believe this was anything beyond a continuance," she said.
"I think the parties involved were discourteous to the court and to the neighbors" of the site, Vogel said. "I don't have time to hear the case today, and this is an important case."
The cleanup was halted because of a dispute over paperwork, the DEM's chief legal counsel, Gerald F. McAvoy, said after Friday's brief court session.
Global Waste did not provide "supporting materials" along with the weekly weight-tally sheets it is required to provide each week, McAvoy said.
Because of this, the DEM did not approve payments from Global's closure fund to Lakeview Farms, a Johnston contractor removing debris from Global. (Under a court order in 2000, Global had to make the DEM a co-signatory to that fund, meaning no money can be withdrawn from it without both parties' consent.) So, the cleanup stopped.
McAvoy said the immediate issue has been settled. "Payments will be reinstituted," he said.
Between December 2001 and December 2002, Global removed 79,761 tons from the site, according to the DEM. Officials estimate that 60,000 tons remain. Providence Journal