Veterans Administration Medical Center in Wichita, Kan., to Pay $17,979 Civil Penalty to Settle Hazardous Waste Issues (KS)
Environmental News
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Kansas City, Kan., July 26, 2011) - The Robert
J. Dole Veterans Administration Medical Center in Wichita, Kan.,
has agreed to pay a $17,979 civil penalty to the United States to
settle a series of hazardous waste violations on its
campus.
In addition to the civil penalty, the Veterans
Administration has agreed to spend an estimated $61,900 on a
supplemental environmental project to erect a hazardous waste
accumulation building at the Wichita hospital. The Medical Center
will safely accumulate hazardous wastes in the building prior to
timely shipping the wastes to permitted facilities for proper
treatment and disposal.
EPA inspectors conducted an inspection of the
Medical Center in April 2010 and noted a number of violations of
the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and
Kansas Administrative Regulations, which regulate the management
and disposal of hazardous wastes.
The violations noted during the inspection
included failures to make hazardous waste determinations, failures
to inspect, label, date and close hazardous waste containers;
failures to make arrangements with emergency responders, failures
to label used oil containers, and disposal of hazardous waste
through the biological waste system.
According to an administrative consent agreement
filed by EPA Region 7 in Kansas City, Kan., the violations involved
used oil filters, used oil, spent anti-freeze and other liquid
wastes in maintenance areas; unknown materials in a waste storage
area; waste pharmaceuticals disposed in biomedical waste collection
throughout the facility; and chemotherapy waste disposed with
biomedical waste from the Medical Center’s Oncology
Clinic.
As part of the settlement, the Veterans
Administration must submit to EPA documentation of all hazardous
waste determinations performed at the Wichita facility since April
2010, along with a standard operating procedure for assuring that
all solid wastes at its facility receive a hazardous waste
determination. On a quarterly basis for a year, the Medical Center
must also provide photographic evidence of proper closing, labeling
and dating of its hazardous waste accumulation containers, and of
proper management of its used oil containers and tanks. It must
also provide EPA with copies of shipping manifests for hazardous
wastes that are sent off-site.
Learn more about EPA’s civil enforcement of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
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