Two New York Men Go to Prison for Illegal Asbestos Dumping

Two men from Herkimer County, New York will be doing some jail time after they ignored federal and state rules pertaining to the disposal of asbestos-containing materials.

In a courtroom overseen by U.S. District Judge David Hurd, Dominick Mazza was sentenced to more than four years in prison while Cross NiCastro received a sentence of almost three years. Mazza & Sons, Inc., owned by Mr. Mazza, will be subject to a fine of $100,000 and has been ordered to pay restitution of almost a half-million dollars for its disregard of federal environmental laws.

According to an article in The Post-Standard, there were several companies involved in a conspiracy to dump friable asbestos on a 28-acre site in Frankfort, NY. Mazza’s company, which is headquartered in New Jersey, was one of two from that state that were involved in the scheme.

For three months in 2006, Mazza and others dumped literally millions of pounds of asbestos at the site on Southside Road. As a result of the mess, the EPA was prompted to create a Superfund site at the location. The article reports that the debris consisted of demolished homes and commercial buildings from New Jersey that had been put through an industrial shredder without removing asbestos first. Hence, the material and its fibers were everywhere, creating the potential for asbestos exposure and prompting a huge health hazard for those who live or work in the area.

Records show that Mazza and the others had intended for the dumping to go on for at least another five years but were caught in just a few months time. In all, five men have now been convicted of conspiring to violate the federal Clean Water Act at the Frankfort site, dumping an estimated 430 tractor-trailer loads of asbestos-contaminated material there from July to October 2006.