Thursday, February 12, 2009

Introduction of contempt complaint

I got this new Adobe that lets me copy stuff from PDF files (or maybe it's a Windows Vista thing), so here is the intro to the contempt complaint the Attorney General filed against New Ventures. The trial starts April 23.

The next post will be NV's response to the complaint.

COMPLAINT FOR
CIVIL CONTEMPT


INTRODUCTION
1. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts brings this action for civil contempt pursuant to Mass. R. Civ. P. 65.3 against New Ventures Associates LLC ("New Ventures") for violating the requirements of a Preliminary Injunction entered by the Court in this action on October 20, 2006 and amended by order of the Court on November 1,2006 and February 22,2007, as well as a supplemental injunctive order entered on September 20,2007. New Ventures owns and operates the Crow Lane landfill, located on Crow Lane in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and has blatantly disregarded several key requirements of this Court's injunctive orders. In late August, 2008, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection notified New Ventures that it was in violation of multiple requirements of this Court's injunctive orders and demanded that New Ventures return to compliance. Since then, New Ventures has failed to remedy nearly all of the violations noticed in late August. Among other continuing violations, New Ventures has: failed to operate the landfill gas pretreatment system so that it removes at least ninety-five percent (95%) of hydrogen sulfide; failed to equip the landfill gas control system with all three required pretreatment tanks; failed to take required daily samples from the landfill gas control system or submit required operational data to demonstrate that the system is removing at least 95% of the hydrogen sulfide gas emitted from that landfill; failed to pump the landfill's leachate collection tanks, all of which are over capacity and some of which are overflowing and releasing foul smelling leachate; and failed to take other actions to prevent and abate nuisance conditions that threaten public health and safety. As a result of New Ventures' repeated violations of the Court's injunctive orders and Massachusetts environmental laws and regulations, the residents of Newburyport who live near the landfill have continued to suffer from releases of noxious hydrogen sulfide and other landfill gases.

2. In this action for contempt, the Commonwealth seeks an Order requiring that New Ventures immediately return to full compliance with this Court's injunctive orders. The Commonwealth also requests that New Venture pay to the Commonwealth's costs, including its attorney's fees, in prosecuting this contempt action.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can this entire order be posted? It cut off at 2.

Gillian Swart said...

It's 18 pages long ... ! The response was shorter so I posted all of that. I'll send it to anyone who wants it, though ...