43-year-old part-owner of Precision Pavement Markings, Inc, William Duran Vizzera, Jr, was sentenced for illegally disposing of over 200,000 pounds of hazardous waste on Wednesday.

Vizzera received a sentence of 15 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of $395,319 to two victims by Chief Judge Ralph R. Beistline. The sentencing was announced by Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, and Karen L. Loeffler, U.S. Attorney for the District of Alaska.

The case against began against Vizzera in November of 2010 after it was reported that a large number of drum were abandoned at an Anchorage storage lot.

An investigation was begun by the Environmental Protection Investigation Division. The EPA, during their investigation, discovered 204,705 pounds of hazardous waste in 321 55-gallon drums, 179 five-gallon buckets and 2 200-gallon totes. Some of the containers were found stacked two high on a trailer while the rest were found stored directly on the ground. Many of the containers were marked hazardous, but others were not. Also many of the containers were bulging and others rusted out.

It was found by the investigators that the waste was from a prior pavement business owned by Vizzera several years earlier. The business was operated out of the storage yard from 2006 until 2009. After unsuccessfully attempting to rid himself of the toxic waste by having his employees take it to the local landfill, where they were turned away, and after contacting an environmental services company that informed him that the proper disposal of the waste would cost into the tens of thousands of dollars, The waste was abandoned at the storage yard.

San LLC, who leased the property from the Alaska Railroad Corporation, were left with the highly flammable hazardous waste that included methyl methacrylate paint and toluene that was used to flush the paint lines, nozzles and sprayers used in Vizzera’s road and parking lot painting business. Those costs would ultimately rise to almost $400,000 to clean up and remediate the storage site and pay legal fees. The Alaska Railroad also incurred legal fees in the violation as well. The restitution Vizzera was ordered to ay by the court is to reimburse those costs to the Alaska Railroad Corporation and San LLC.

“By abandoning hundreds of bulging, rusty drums of hazardous chemicals, Defendant Vizzera knowingly saddled the property owners with a monumental mess and a cleanup bill of close to $400k,” stated Tyler Amon, Special Agent in Charge of EPA’s criminal enforcement program in the Northwest and Alaska. “Being sent to jail should send the message to Vizzera and others — there are severe consequences for environmental crime.”

“The defendant exposed the environment and the public to hundreds of gallons of hazardous waste. Today’s sentence is an appropriate penalty for this egregious crime against the people and environment of Alaska,” said Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division yesterday. “This case shows that we will not tolerate and will vigorously prosecute those who abandon their legal responsibility to properly dispose of hazardous waste.”

“The potential danger posed by the improper disposal of hazardous wastes are well known,” said U.S. Attorney Loeffler. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office is committed to enforcing our nation’s environmental laws to protect the people of Alaska. We have an obligation to insure that our citizens are not injured and our lands are not polluted by the illegal disposal of hazardous materials.”

Vizzera pled guilty in a plea agreement on August 17th of this year. The maximum penalty for knowingly disposing of hazardous waste is a sentence of five years in prison and a $50,000 fine for every day of the violation.