MANATEE — A company has agreed to plead guilty to committing “environmental crimes” at its Port Manatee facility and pay more than $1.3 million in penalties, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Kinder Morgan Port Manatee Terminal LLC admitted in a plea deal that it violated the federal Clean Air Act at its 500 National St. facility during a seven-year period, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa said. Those violations involved a malfunctioning air-pollution control system.
For that, the company agreed to pay a $750,000 fine, pay $250,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, serve two years of probation and implement an “extensive” environmental compliance plan. The foundation payment would be used “for a project targeted at environmental restoration, mitigation and/or education in the Manatee County area,” according to the plea agreement.
In a separate case, Kinder Morgan also agreed to pay $336,000 in fines and costs to state environmental regulators for similar violations.
“There is simply no excuse for this company to break our nation’s environmental laws,” said Maureen O’Mara, special agent in charge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s criminal enforcement office in Atlanta.
The violations involve “baghouses,” machines that trap, filter and separate dust and other airborne particles. Air-quality permits require Kinder Morgan to use them at its Port Manatee facility, which receives and ships materials such as granular fertilizers and cement clinker by rail, truck and ship.
Those baghouses frequently “were in poor condition and several were not fully operational at various times” between 2001 and 2008, according to the plea deal.
Prosecutors also said Kinder Morgan officials falsely told the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in 2006 and 2007 that the baghouses would be operated correctly, and failed to tell the agency of the malfunctioning machines between late 2006 and early 2008.
The Kinder Morgan officials involved “are no longer employed by the company as a result of their failure to comply with the company’s environmental policies and procedures,” Kinder Morgan spokesman Larry Pierce said in an e-mail from the company’s corporate headquarters in Houston.
He said the company self-reported the violations in March 2008 following an internal audit, and has since corrected the problem.
Steve Tyndal, the port’s senior director of trade development and special projects, said port officials were unaware of Kinder Morgan’s environmental issues until Wednesday’s announcement. That has prompted port officials to review the company’s lease of six acres of port-owned land, he said.
The plea deal, which still must get court approval, is milder than what the company could have gotten: a maximum penalty of $2 million in fines and 20 years in prison. The decision not to seek tougher penalties “was prosecutorial discretion,” said Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
That is why prosecutors also agreed not to file further criminal charges in connection with the case, even though DEP records show violations at the facility continued well into 2009.
DEP spokeswoman Ana Gibbs said the agency began investigating the Kinder Morgan site in February 2008 and found multiple violations, including failure to conduct required testing and meet permit application deadlines, inadequate record keeping and using unpermitted conveyer belts.
That led to a consent order in which the company agreed to pay a $331,000 fine and $5,000 in investigative costs. The facility still is considered out of compliance, according to a check of DEP’s enforcement and compliance database.
The plea deal and consent order both call for Kinder Morgan to implement an environmental compliance plan that includes hiring independent consultants to perform emissions testing and quarterly inspections of baghouses; implementing an enhanced employee training program; and reporting equipment failures or other Clean Air Act violations within 24 hours.
A federal judge is scheduled to consider the plea agreement at a March 11 hearing.
Duane Marsteller, transportation/growth and development reporter, can be reached at 745-7080, ext. 2630.
