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FLORIDA WOMAN SENTENCED FOR ILLEGAL STORAGE OF CHEMICALS
Release Date: 07/12/2001
Contact Information:
FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2001
FLORIDA WOMAN SENTENCED FOR ILLEGAL STORAGE OF CHEMICALS
Luke C. Hester 202-564-7818 / hester.luke@epa.gov
Luke C. Hester 202-564-7818 / hester.luke@epa.gov
On July 3, Liliana Guzman-Haynes, formerly of Miami, Fla., was sentenced for violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to six months home detention and two years probation. She also was ordered to pay restitution of $29,095.54 to the Miami-Dade County Department of Environmental Resource Management (DERM) for costs associated with the cleanup and disposal of hazardous chemicals. The defendant was an owner of Olympic International Freight Forwarders, Inc., a South Florida freight company that shipped chemicals to Latin America. In 1997, four cargo palates of chemical containers originally consigned to Olympic International were discovered dumped in western Dade County, Fla. The containers were in extremely poor condition and contained carcinogens, acids, and poisons such as acetone, nitric acid, ethyl ether, nitrobenzene and toluene which presented a significant fire and explosion hazard. Over a period of several years and through several different companies and locations, the chemicals were illegally stored by Guzman-Haynes because they had been shipped in error, had passed their expiration date and were otherwise no longer suitable for their original use. The case was investigated by EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General, DERM’s Environmental Crimes Unit, the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Environmental Crimes Unit, the Dade County State Attorney’s Office and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Law Enforcement. It was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.
R-105 ###
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