Penny Wise And Pound Foolish Brings Hefty Fines.

Penny Wise And Pound Foolish Brings Hefty Fines.
Business is about making choices so successful business owners understand how to measure risks when required to decide between two options. Weighing $3,500 against $20,000 is a no brainer. By Isaac Rudik

For as long as there have been poorly-done cop shows on television, bad guys have been getting caught because they make a stupid mistake. Whether robbers, killers, con artists or polluters, the typical plot twist leading to their arrest just before the closing credits roll involves them doing something idiotic, careless, forgetful or lackadaisical.

When the writers toss greedy and penny-pinching crooks into the story, the episode takes on the feel of a Marx Brother’s movie.

Actually, if you put these ingredients together in one episode, it’s likely that producers would toss the writers and their script out the window for offering up a tale that is too far-fetched, improbable and unbelievable – even for television.

Yet not long ago, just such an implausible story line played out in real life in Ontario, where a trio of penny-pinching, not-too-bright polluters got caught in the act of dumping toxic waste in an open field in broad daylight. And while theirs is a tale of ineptitude and sheer idiocy, it shows that when it comes to disposing of pollutants, being penny wise and pound foolish brings hefty fines far more expensive than what it would have cost to dispose of the material properly.

Over A Barrel

A ministry environmental officer was called to a remote side road on the outskirts of Hamilton after local police reported intentional dumping of industrial waste.

A van was backed into the trees. On the ground were nine 45-gallon metal drums, apparently pushed from the vehicle. Several more were still inside. The smell of solvent filled the air. Two young men waited in the back of police cruisers. They later admitted in court that they were promised cash to get rid of the drums for a warehouse owner in Oakville.

The venture quickly went wrong.

Barrels broke as they were shoved from the truck. A near-by farmer saw what was going on and confronted the men, blocking the van’s exit with his pickup as he called police who arrested the pair and called the Ministry of the Environment.

The two dumpers refused to tell police who’d hired them. But the MoE investigator traced serial numbers on the barrels to an industrial grease manufacturer, which pointed them to an Oakville warehouse.

The warehouse owners ran a business that acquired and resold discontinued goods. When they bought the building, 32 barrels of grease were in the space. Hoping to escape the expense of proper disposal, the warehouse manager asked a friend to remove the containers. Along with another man, he took 32 drums to the field.

In the end, the trio paid $20,000 in fines and was ordered to pay Hamilton for cleanup costs, which required excavating about 14-tons of contaminated soil. The bizarre twist is that it would have cost less than $5,000 to remove the drums legally.

No-Brainer Alternative

Business is about making choices so successful business owners understand how to measure risks when required to decide between two options. Weighing $3,500 against $20,000 is a no brainer.

For example, drum modular spill platforms that store as many as 32, 45-gallon barrels is a solution that protects the business, the environment and the bottom line.

The platforms can be arranged in an endless number of configurations and feature a low profile for easy loading and unloading. Their blow moulded, high density, polyethylene construction provides superior strength and a removable poly grating allows for easy cleaning.

As important, they offer superior chemical resistance. The six and eight drum units provide for added storage capability and easier access to the drums and a moveable ramp allows for easy loading and unloading.

Using modular platforms to provide spill control is the kind of decision that’s easy to make, especially when the up-front cost is a fraction of what fines, costs and damage to the business – and environment – will run.






Isaac Rudik is a compliance consultant with Compliance Solutions Canada Inc. (www.compliancesolutionscanada.com), Canada’s largest provider of health, safety and environmental compliance solutions to industrial, institutional and government facilities.

E-mail Isaac at irudik@csc-inc.ca or phone him at 905-761-5354.