Santa Barbara County fined a Santa Ynez Valley hotel $31,000 for illegally disposing hazardous waste in an adjacent dumpster.
“This settlement holds the hotel owners responsible for putting our environment, our communities, and our first responders at risk,” county District Attorney Joyce Dudley said in an Oct. 20 statement. “Even though the illegal conduct was not intentional or negligent, the risks presented were real and the law imposes strict liability for these environmental violations.”
According to court documents, the Holiday Inn Express in Solvang hired two temporary employees in July 2014 to clean up trash on its property, which included two 1-gallon containers of muriatic acid, a chemical used to regulate pH in swimming pools.
A press release from Dudley’s office said the containers were placed in the dumpster with the rest of the trash picked up by the two workers and was eventually discovered by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department when fumes began emitting from the area.
Firefighters contacted the county’s Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA)—a unit of Santa Barbara County’s Environmental Health Services that regulates hazardous-waste compliance. Inspectors noted the two containers were “leaking and reacting with other substances in the dumpster.”
The chemicals were then hauled off and properly disposed of, the release said.
Dudley’s office filed a complaint on Aug. 22 of this year detailing the hotel’s violations.
Holiday Inn’s management—Solvang Hotel Group—agreed to take corrective action and settled shortly after the complaint was filed.
In addition to the fine, the court ordered the hotel to implement a training program to teach employees proper methods for emptying and disposing hazardous-material containers, which will remain in place for at least five years.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 2, 2017.