United States v. STABL, No. 14-2050 (8th Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CaseSTABL processed dead cattle and offal in Lexington. As part of Nebraska’s EPA-approved National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program, the state issued STABL a pretreatment permit, effective in 2008, that contained effluent limitations for wastewater that STABL discharged to the city’s wastewater treatment plant. The city controlled the valve that allowed wastewater to flow from STABL’s facility to the treatment plant. STABL paid the city to perform testing and monitoring and used the city’s records as the basis for discharge monitoring reports required by the permit. STABL’s manager signed the DMRs, which reflect numerous instances when STABL exceeded its permit limitations. In 2010, STABL sold its facility. The purchase price was reduced by $1 million to account for the costs of a pretreatment system needed to bring STABL’s facility into compliance. The federal and the Nebraska governments brought an enforcement action against STABL for violations of the Clean Water Act , 33 U.S.C. 1342, and the Nebraska Environmental Protection Act. The court granted the government partial summary judgment and, following a bench trial of the remaining issues, imposed a civil penalty of $2,285,874. The Eighth Circuit affirmed, finding that district court’s evidentiary rulings and grant of partial summary judgment were not in error or were harmless error.
Court Description: Wollman, Author, with Smith and Benton, Circuit Judges] Civil case - Clean Water Act. In an enforcement action by the United States and the State of Nebraska against STABL for violations of the Clean Water Act and the Nebraska Environmental Act, the district court did not err in finding that the company's effluent discharges exceeded its permit limits and its legal duty to monitor the discharge to avoid violations; the district court did not err in admitting into evidence the discharge monitoring reports STABL had to certify as the documents were nonhearsay adoptive admissions; further, by failing to respond to the government's requests for admissions regarding the discharge monitoring reports, STABL admitted their authenticity and that they were what they reported to be - STABL's discharge monitoring reports signed by its general manager; when a defendant's own discharge monitoring reports demonstrate discharge in excess of permit limits, they constitute sufficient evidence to meet a Clear Water Act plaintiff's burden of production on liability and may be sufficient, in some circumstances, to entitle plaintiff to summary judgment; a defendant who wishes to challenge the accuracy of the laboratory results bears a heavy burden to impeach its own reports and cannot meet that burden by simply pointing to potential error without specific evidence showing the error likely resulted in overreporting of pollutant levels; here, defendant failed to impeach the results; testimony by EPA compliance officer was primarily related to his industry experience rather than expert knowledge and he did not have to disclosed as an expert; no error in admitting testimony from the government's expert on economic benefit as any delay in the submission of his report was harmless; the district court did not err in rejecting STABL's challenge to the accuracy of the city's monitoring records as it was under an obligation to ensure that the sampling data was accurate and representative; because STABL's challenges to witness testimony and the admissibility of the discharge monitoring reports fail, and because it had not sufficiently impeached the accuracy of the reports and monitoring records, the evidence would have allowed the district court to grant judgment as a matter of law on the number of effluent-limitations violations and any error in denying a jury trial was harmless.
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