NORWAY – Two Wal-Mart stores in Maine have paid a civil penalty of $7,100 for failing to submit hazardous waste reports by a required deadline to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
The two stores involved are at 1240 Main St. in Oxford and 30 Landing Road in Windham.
DEP has recommended that the Board of Environmental Protection and the state attorney general accept a consent agreement with Wal-Mart because the stores submitted the required reports last December and paid the penalty. The board is scheduled to discuss the consent agreement as an agenda item at a meeting Thursday in Augusta.
The consent agreement was signed by Wal-Mart on Sept. 7.
A section of the state’s Toxics Use and Hazardous Waste Reduction Law requires that facilities that ship more than 2,640 pounds of hazardous waste in a calendar year must submit a Biennial Pollution Prevention Progress Report to DEP by July 1 of every even-numbered year.
According to a copy of the consent agreement, Wal-Mart’s Windham store shipped 10,291 pounds of hazardous waste in 2003. The Oxford store shipped 7,159 pounds of hazardous waste the same year.
The agreement notes that there is a “dispute of fact” among the three parties as to whether the waste constituted hazardous waste subject to the law’s reporting requirements. It does not identify the waste.
Officials at Wal-Mart and DEP were unavailable for comment.
Soon after the July 1, 2004, deadline for submission of the reports, DEP reviewed its files regarding Wal-Mart stores and discovered that the two stores had not submitted the reports on time.
The stores were issued a letter of warning on Oct. 5, 2004, and a notice of violation on Nov. 3, 2004.
The stores submitted the reports on Dec. 2, 2004.
The state’s general fund will receive $1,420 of the civil penalty, with the remaining $5,680 going to the Kennebec County Soil and Water Conservation District. The money will help fund a $12,000 remediation and stabilization project at a section of Bond Brook in Augusta where a slope failure occurred.
Bond Brook has a stocked population of brown trout and has historically been a breeding ground for Atlantic salmon.
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