Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach, along with 51 other California District Attorneys and two city attorneys, announced that a San Joaquin County Superior Court judge has ordered the Pennsylvania-based Rite Aid Corporation to pay $12.3 million as part of a settlement of a civil environmental prosecution.
“This office is committed to the protection of the county’s citizens from the unlawful disposal of these types of hazardous materials,” said Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach. “It is important that all businesses in the county understand their responsibility in the legal and safe storage, transportation and disposal of hazardous waste material. The DA’s Office will continue to do all we can to make sure these important safety regulations are followed by all businesses.”
The judgment is the culmination of a civil enforcement lawsuit filed in San Joaquin County in September 2013 and led by the District Attorneys of Riverside, Los Angeles and San Joaquin counties, claiming that more than 600 Rite Aid stores throughout the state unlawfully handled and disposed of various hazardous wastes and materials over a 6 ½-year period.
Those hazardous wastes and materials included pesticides, bleach, paint, aerosols, automotive products and solvents, pharmaceutical and bio hazardous wastes and other toxic, ignitable and corrosive materials. From 2009 to present, prosecutors and investigators from the Riverside County District Attorney’s Environmental Crimes Unit — along with deputy district attorneys, investigators, and environmental regulators statewide — conducted waste inspections at Rite Aid facilities and at landfills throughout California. The inspections revealed that Rite Aid was unlawfully sending hazardous waste to local landfills.
There were 39 Rite Aid stores in Riverside County at the time (one has since closed) and most were found to have violations.
Under the final judgment, Rite Aid must pay $10.35 million in civil penalties and costs. An additional $1.9 million will fund supplemental environmental projects furthering consumer protection and environmental enforcement in California. The retailer will be bound under the terms of a permanent injunction prohibiting similar future violations of law. Under the settlement, Rite Aid will pay $344,000 in civil penalties and cost recovery to Riverside County environmental regulators and $1.3 million in civil penalties and cost recovery to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office.
Rite Aid was cooperative and has adopted enhanced policies and procedures designed to eliminate the disposal of hazardous waste products in California. Stores are required to retain their hazardous waste in segregated, labeled containers so as to minimize the risk of exposure to employees and customers and to ensure that incompatible wastes do not combine to cause dangerous chemical reactions. Hazardous waste produced by California Rite Aid stores through damage, spills and returns is being collected by state-registered haulers, taken to proper disposal facilities and properly documented and accounted for. Rite Aid has now implemented a computerized scanning system and other training to manage its waste to further assure that the public is protected.
The case was handled in Riverside County by Deputy District Attorney Dale Hoy of the DA’s Environmental Crimes Unit.