Plant owner may face $1.5 billion in fines (EPA is at it again!)

Steve McNabb, owner of American Carolina Stamping, is shown by one of the machines in his company on 64 West .

PENROSE -- Federal environmental penalties proposed for a metal stamping plant here four years after a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency raid could reach up to $1.5 billion, the plant's owner says.

Steve McNabb, owner of American Carolina Stamping, said Wednesday a Sept. 4 EPA complaint and compliance order could mean he has to pay $1.5 billion in penalties for alleged hazardous waste violations dating back to 1994.

EPA officials could not be reached for comment Thursday. But McNabb said EPA officials told him his math could be correct.

Agents from the EPA's criminal investigations division raided the small plant April 15, 1999 looking for hazardous waste violations.

McNabb said he has fought the EPA's attempts to get a criminal indictment. By law, the EPA had five years after the raid in which to file charges or drop the case. The complaint and compliance order is not an indictment.

This is the first official response from the EPA since that raid more than four years ago, McNabb said. In his fight against the investigation he garnered support from U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard, and N.C. Rep. Trudi Walend, R-Brevard. The raid at McNabb's business was featured on a "60 Minutes" program that focused on alleged EPA abuses.

The complaint and compliance order listed four counts against the plant, including "treatment and disposal of hazardous waste without a permit or interim status."

The order called all counts "very severe violations" and said they had "a major adverse effect on the ... protection of human health and the environment."

McNabb has denied that his plant, which manufactures wire forms, electrical contacts and metal stamping products, improperly disposed of a cleaning solvent.

"There was no environmental harm," he said. "This is all strictly paperwork. And I can prove that we have the proper permits."

The counts carry various penalties assessed at $27,500 a day, some dating back to 1994. McNabb said by his calculations EPA expects him to pay $1.5 billion.

McNabb said he wrote a letter to the EPA after the raid saying his plant was operating as it had and asked if he should change any operations to become compliant. He said he never got a response.

The order said traces of the solvent, which contains hexane, alcohol and methanol, were found outside the plant in a burn pit and in barrels.

McNabb said the plant has no burn pit and that the barrels contained the old solvent. His plant is small enough, McNabb said, that it did not need types of permits the EPA said he lacked.

The solvent itself, he has said, easily evaporates and is not hazardous.

McNabb said he intends to request a hearing to contest the order.

Burgess can be reached at 694-7860 or by e-mail at joel.burgess@hendersonvillenews.com.

Here's a previous article on this same subject from August 26, 2001.

Feud with the feds
Steve McNabb doesn’t wear a seat belt. At least not during the few minutes it takes him to drive his truck from his metal stamping plant in Penrose to another facility he owns near the Transylvania and Henderson county line on U.S. 64 West.

Saying the 59-year-old McNabb doesn’t like to be told what to do is an understatement. A hands-on mechanical engineer and businessman, he takes special exception when it comes to his plant, American Carolina Stamping, which he runs and co-owns with his wife, Janet.

That’s why the topic of a 1999 raid on ACS by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency particularly riles him.

When retelling the story of how armed and flak-jacketed officers from the EPA’s criminal investigation division entered his business April 15 of that year looking for illegally dumped hazardous waste, McNabb often turns red-faced and fling strings of unprintables that would make the saltiest sailors blush.

He makes no apologies.

Suing the EPA

Over the two years and four months since the raid, the EPA-CID has brought no charges against him, and McNabb continues to run the plant. But he adds that the raid cut deeply into business, scaring off even longtime customers.

Last September, McNabb brought his own civil suit against the EPA, claiming it violated his and family’s rights by intimidating his customers, illegally searching the home of his son, Jay, and falsifying evidence, among other things. He is asking for $6 million.

But he has not fared well in court. The CID agents’ status as federal law enforcers gives them immunity that in some cases prevents them from being sued, the court said, quashing McNabb’s claims before they got anywhere.

Judges have ordered the two parties to try to mediate their differences Thursday before McNabb pursues an appeal in a federal court.

But McNabb is not hopeful anything will be resolved.

“I honestly don’t believe they’re going to do anything with this,” he says.

The EPA can wait. They have five years from the time of the raid during which they have to act or close the case.

McNabb believes he can last five years. Unlike many plant owners, his equipment is paid for, he says.

He also has the ear of the press and is using it to push his case against the EPA. The culmination of these efforts came March 25 when McNabb appeared on a CBS “60 Minutes” news show exploring alleged abuses by the EPA-CID.

U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard, has offered McNabb encouragement, going so far as to say he would push for congressional hearings. On the state level, Rep. Trudi Walend, R-Brevard, continues to question the role of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources in the raid.

Last September, she wondered aloud why, if the stamping plant posed an environmental threat, the EPA continued to let it operate.

“Most people like myself are very concerned about the environment. If there’s an environmental issue, we need to clean it up, but it just seems ridiculous,” she said. “I guess there’s no serious issue out there, or they would have taken care of it already.”

As is customary during investigations, neither the EPA nor the U.S. Justice Department ó nor anyone else involved with the federal government’s case ó will comment on either the raid or McNabb’s civil suit.

But using sworn affidavits of agents involved as well as letters and other documents from EPA, DENR and local law enforcement, McNabb believes he can show untruths, falsifications and a rift that has appeared between the state and federal environmental organizations.

Prelude to a raid

McNabb lays much of the blame for EPA involvement on DENR field agent Spring Allen. He and an affidavit by Allen both agree that their Dec. 28, 1998, encounter was less than pleasant.

Allen’s affidavit says McNabb swore loudly and became abusive toward her when she went to the stamping plant to investigate an anonymous complaint that a petroleum-and-alcohol-based solvent was being dumped.

McNabb denies the dumping allegation but agrees he cursed Allen loudly and personally. What set him off was that Allen would not explain exactly why she was there, he said, contrary to her affidavit and written report.

Soon after the encounter, he spoke with Allen’s supervisor at the time, Keith Masters, and McNabb says he and Masters came to an understanding. Masters drafted a letter before retiring Jan. 31 asking McNabb to help resolve the issues. In the letter, he mentions a second anonymous complaint that DENR received about the dumping of “oil-contaminated metal sludge.”

But that letter was never sent. Masters retired. McNabb said Allen and her acting boss, DENR Hazardous Waste Division Supervisor Doug Hollyfield, conspired to not send the letter and call in EPA-CID instead.

Both Hollyfield and Allen deny any conspiracy in their affidavits. Hollyfield says he agreed with Allen’s recommendation to go to the federal agency because the complaints “raised the possibility of criminal violations.”

McNabb, meanwhile, contends he would never dump the solvent in question because of its high price and reusability.

“We use it until it’s gone. It’s $8.42 a gallon. I’d shoot somebody for pouring it out,” he said.

Clashing affidavits

McNabb also alleges EPA-CID officers illegally entered Jay McNabb’s house, which is next to the plant, to secure his guns, then falsified affidavits to cover their entrance.

An affidavit by Special Agent Tyler Amon says McNabb’s son allowed officers to enter. The son disagrees.

Amon also says he learned of the guns from a Transylvania County detective, which the detective denies. Amon’s affidavit says that “prior to the execution of a search warrant, Detective Gayle Mackey with the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Department informed me that several guns were maintained at the residence adjacent to the ACS.”

But Mackey said in a February affidavit requested by McNabb that he “did not tell Tyler Amon anything about whether or not Jay McNabb might have had guns in his trailer. I did not have any advance firsthand knowledge of whether or not he may have had guns.”

A possible rift

While calling in the EPA-CID appeared to be a good alternative to dealing with an uncooperative, threatening plant owner, some DENR officials now seem to be questioning the federal agency’s methods.

Mounting pressure from county, state and federal officials and press attention have not made the state agency want to marry itself to the cause, McNabb said.

Written correspondence between DENR officials in Asheville and Winston-Salem seems to back this up.

On July 27, 1999, Hollyfield responded to a e-mail from Asheville Hazardous Waste Section chief Jesse Wells.

Wells was asking permission to help McNabb understand the EPA’s lab analysis of samples it had taken and expressed frustration that the federal agency had not kept DENR in the loop.

“It kind of chapped me that EPA did not provide us a copy of the results prior to this,” Wells said.

Hollyfield responded, saying in part, “By all means support ACS (the stamping plant) with evaluating the data. I agree the way EPA has handled this is (sic) has been far from acceptable.”

DENR Public Affairs Director Don Reuter said his agency rarely called on the federal agents, referring more to the State Bureau of Investigation.

“That is not an ordinary form of doing business,” he said.

McNabb, meanwhile, continues to insist the lack of an indictment is proof of his innocence. Business has dropped by about $9 million since the day of the raid and he has cut the work force from 24 to eight, he says, but the plant continues to operate.

“I just want to know why, if there is such a big damn environmental risk to the public, that they haven’t shut the plant down,” he says. “I haven’t changed anything in the way I operate.”

Contact Burgess at Joel.Burgess@hendersonvillenews.com.

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