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Vice President and Operations Manager of Detroit Environmental Firm Indicted

Release Date: 08/29/2003
Contact Information:


Teresa Libera 202-564-7873/libera.teresa@epa.gov

(08/29/03) Gazi George, former Vice President of U.S. Liquids of Detroit Inc., which does business as USL-City Environmental Inc., (USL) in Detroit, Mich., and Donald Roeser, USL’s former Operations Manager, were indicted on Aug. 21. The charges include witness tampering and both Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act violations. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan indicted the two men on allegations they conspired to discharge untreated and insufficiently treated waste into the Detroit sanitary sewer system, falsified waste treatment logs, installed a bypass pipe, tampered with monitoring devices and provided false samples to a laboratory between 1997 and Aug. 25, 1999. In addition, the defendants are charged with conspiring to transport hazardous waste to a landfill not licensed to receive hazardous waste and tampering with USL employee witnesses. Discharging untreated wastes to sewer systems can create a public health hazard and damage sewage treatment equipment and improperly disposing of hazardous wastes in landfills can also have significant public health implications. The case was investigated by the Cleveland Area Office of EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division and the FBI with the assistance of EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center and is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit. An indictment is merely an allegation and all defendants are presumed innocent unless or until proven guilty in a court of law.