more felony polluters
The Dude's post about felony prosecution for polluting got me interested in finding out if there are more. I found this one, about a farmer deliberately routing manure runoff and waste from a milk room. They're serious about it- his sentence is 2 1/2 years.
At the other end of the spectrum is the Evergreen company, a Taiwan container shipping company, who for more than 3 years, failed to process their oily wastewater from their engine operations. Instead, they dumped it into the oceans. Now they've pled guilty to 24 felony counts and 1 misdemeanor, and they're paying a total of $25 mil. Ten million of it will be used for 'environmental community service projects'. I wonder what that means. I've learned enough in this class to be highly skeptical of such euhphemisms.
posted by Anonymous @ 9:20 PM
1 Comments:
Two and a half years is harsh, but designed to keep others from doing the same thing. The damages are punitive, rather than compensatory.
It's sort of like Utah's "sin taxes" on alchohol and tobacco. If they really wanted people to stop using these products, the state government would put extremely high taxes on them; instead, they've decided to take advantage of it by taxing enough to help pay for schools. As a result, the state becomes reliant on these industries, in spite of its "opposition" to them.
Post a Comment
<< Home