A Wilmington, Del., corporation, International Petroleum Corporation (“IPC”), was sentenced in early February to a $1.3 million fine and forced to pay $2.2 million in restitution to the city of Wilmington for environmental crimes, including conspiracy to violate the Clean Water Act.

IPC operated a used oil and hydrocarbon reprocessing facility that was permitted under the Clean Water Act to pre-treat wastewater from operations and discharge it into a sewer owned by the city of Wilmington. IPC’s pretreatment permit required it to take monthly “representative” samples of the treated wastewater to determine compliance with IPC’s permit limits. IPC, however, admitted that the samples were not “representative” of the wastewater discharged from the facility because IPC had tampered with the monitoring methods and a monitoring device required by IPC’s permit.

IPC also admitted to violating the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act (“RCRA”) for transporting hazardous waste without a manifest. In 2012, IPC stored and shipped sludge removed from the bottom of storage tanks to South Carolina for disposal. The sludge contained benzene, barium, chromium, cadmium, lead, tetrachloroethene and trichloroethene, each of which classified the sludge as hazardous waste.

The former branch manager of the facility was also indicted for his role in tampering with the wastewater monitoring, knowingly storing and disposing of hazardous waste in violation of RCRA and falsifying waste manifests. You can read the full indictment here. For more on IPC’s penalties, you can visit the EPA’s website.