United States v. Landfill Technologies of Arecibo Corp.

On May 30, 2014, EPA announced that it had reached an agreement with Landfill Technologies of Arecibo Corp., the municipality of Arecibo and the Puerto Rico Land Authority to settle alleged violations of the Clean Air Act involving defendants’ failures to install a gas collection and control system at a Puerto Rico landfill by a 2005 deadline. Installation of the system was completed in 2012, but EPA alleged that in the intervening six-and-a-half years, the landfill emitted substantial amounts of non-methane organic compounds and other landfill gases, including methane. In the consent decree filed in the federal district court for the District of Puerto Rico on May 29, 2014, defendants agreed to pay a total of $350,000 in civil penalties and to implement a comprehensive recycling and composting plan, the details of which were specified in an appendix to the consent decree. A notice in the Federal Register on June 5, 2014 announced that the comment period on the consent decree would remain open for 30 days (until July 7, 2014).