Kansas City, Mo — UtiliCorp United Inc. will pay $1 million to settle violations of the federal Clean Water Act at sewage treatment plants in Nebraska, federal prosecutors said.
The violations stemmed from the Kansas City, Mo.-based utility company's failure to sample properly for various pollutants in discharges from sewage-treatment plants in Cass, Douglas and Dodge counties in Nebraska.
An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that UtiliCorp and a former division of the company, PeopleService Inc. of Omaha, Neb., had violated the federal clean-water law in 1995, 1996 and 1997. The discharges were into various streams that flow into the Missouri River in eastern Nebraska.
UtiliCorp and PeopleService, now an independent company, pleaded guilty Thursday to five criminal misdemeanor violations each, said U.S. Atty. Tom Monaghan in Omaha.
Part of the $1 million fine will go to the U.S. Treasury, but the bulk of it will go to the Nebraska Environmental Trust and Back to the River Inc., dedicated to preserving and restoring natural resources in Nebraska.
PeopleService agreed to pay $100,000 and to take several new steps to improve its compliance with environmental regulations.
UtiliCorp already had been warned by its own auditors that its compliance work needed better monitoring, said Raymond Bosch, a special assistant U.S. attorney.
"There were about 800 different false statements, and in our opinion, the utility did not oversee their own manager," Bosch said Friday.
Bosch said Nebraska environmental officials became suspicious of reports from sewage plants in eastern Nebraska that had long had problems complying with federal limits on their discharges.
Soon after UtiliCorp began sampling for the plants, they reported compliance, Bosch said, even though they had not upgraded the facilities.
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