Environmental Crime and Pollution:

Wasteful Reflections'

Alan A. Block

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.... Crime,

intelligence, socialprotestjreedomofconscience, thought, theft, all that
human laws prosecuted or have prosecuted was hidden in this pit.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

Introduction

I N THE 1 9 7 0 s , A NEW MENACE BECAME THE CENTERPIECE FOR A NEW GENERATION OF

environmentally minded reformers. Organized crime, which controlled the
private sanitation industry in the Northeast, moved center stage. This took
place at approximately the same time that the U.S. government passed the first
important toxic waste legislation in its history. The most significant legislation
passed was the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act that mandated special
handling of the newly recognized category of waste called either toxic or
hazardous. Interestingly enough, the legislation was designed to patrol and
discipline the waste disposers, not the producers. It was based on the premise that
once the waste passed from its producers chemical companies and other
industrial firms into the hands of the disposers, it ceased to be the producers'
property. In any case, a great deal of needed attention was focused on the mob firms
and their practices. There was some rectification of this when Superfund legisla-
tion was passed in the early 1980s. It mandated that all responsible parties
(producers and disposers) would have to clean up polluted sites. It has not always
worked very well. I will discuss this issue at some length using a particularly
egregious organized crime waste group as a template. Concentration on waste
disposers had another significant side. Around 1970, several private carting firms
began a rapid process of expansion, buying dozens and dozens of small carting
companies and landfills across the country. In a relatively short period, they
became the waste industry's most important companies. I will spend some time
explaining the methodology of expansion, for it bears a striking resemblance to the
methods employed by organized criminals. Reformers particularly watched the
giants, if for no other reason than their sheer size and, as I will show, their penchant
to behave improperly.

ALAN BLOCK is Professor of Jewish Studies and Administration of Justice, Pennsylvania State
University, 103 Weaver Bldg., University Park, PA 16802 (e-mail: aab5@psu.edu).

Social Justice Vol. 29, Nos. 1-2 (2002) 61

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By the 1990s, the giants had finally moved into the New York market on the
heels of the government finally doing something significant about mob control.
Once New York was gained, another period of intense consolidation took place.
Two firms ended up controlling most of the New York market. This was a
somewhat unexpected development, I suppose, for one of the charges against
organized crime was that it had constructed a monopoly in New York. Thus, the
criminal cartel monopoly was replaced with a two-firm oligopoly. I shall argue
that the variance between the mob cartel and the giants when it comes to legal
issues such as antitrust and pollution was not very large. I will take an in-depth look
at the past practices of two large firms that were gobbled up in the last phase of
consolidation in New York, for they were involved to one degree or another with
illicit plans and actions to dump toxic waste in Third World countries. Finally, in
the last section of the article, I will discuss other kinds of companies that routinely
pollute.

Criminal Cartels in Waste

In 1957, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor
or Management Field, chaired by Senator John McClellan, showed that organized
crime had built "business empires in the private carting industry through a system
of monopoly enforced by trade associations and cooperative labor unions."^ This
was another instance of organized crime's domination of certain working-class
trades in New York, which included, at one time or another, cinders, cloth
shrinking, construction, fiower shops, the Fulton fish market, funeral homes, hod
carrying, ice, kosher butchers, laundry services, newsstands, overall makers,
paper hangers, taxicabs, waterfront workers, and window cleaners.^ Among the
McClellan Committee's findings after two investigations, one in Los Angeles,
was the degree of ethnicity and kinship that bound racketeers in waste together. In
Los Angeles, Armenian heritage appeared to be the primary connecting link, while
in New York Italian roots were most significant. Among the owners of garbage
firms who were identified as racketeers in the Greater New York area were Antony
Ricci, Carmine Tramunti, Anthony Corallo, Nunzio and Vincent Squillante,
Nicholas Ratteni, James Licari, Gennaro Mancuso, Alfred Toriello, Frank Caruso,
Joseph Feola, and Anthony Carfano. Several had already acquired major reputa-
tions as organized crime felons.
It is not unusual to find a common heritage supported by sometimes-compli-
cated kinship patterns in trades, including those associated with waste. A survey
of Paris sewermen in 1979, for example, found a persistence of "hereditary
endogamy." Parisian sewer workers were "more commonly introduced into the
service by another relative who had been or was a sewerman nephew, uncle,
cousin, brother-in-law, and so on.""* Of course, Parisian sewermen did not go on
to own private sewer businesses and create monopolies based on criminally
coercive practices.
Environmental Crime and Pollution 63

At the base of the private sanitation criminal domains was the principle of
"territorial rights," later called "property rights." This meant that whatever
garbage firm first contracted with a business to pick up its rubbish had a right to
that business forever. Indeed, the right extended to the location itself, no matter
what happened to the original contracting party. Naturally, it was a method of
dimming competition, although sometimes it was honored more in the breach than
otherwise, especially given racketeers' propensity to cheat and steal from one
another.
Following the McClellan Committee's work in 1957, local, state, and federal
authorities pursued garbage racketeering decade after decade. Numerous investi-
gations took place chiefly in the five boroughs of New York City, in Nassau and
Suffolk Counties on Long Island, in Westchester, Putnam, Orange, and Rockland
Counties, just north and northwest of the city, in Northern and Central New Jersey,
and at times in Philadelphia. Each investigation and prosecution revealed orga-
nized crime's monopolies in private sanitation work.

The Routine Activities of Criminal Waste Enterprises

All County Environmental Service Corporation and its related firms is a

template for the mob-related solid and hazardous waste companies investigated
over several decades in the New York Metropolitan Area. It was a transporter of
septic and hazardous wastes, a hazardous waste facility, and a devotee of illegal
hazardous waste disposal. The New York State Assembly Environmental Conser-
vation Committee offered an historical account of All Country, its crimes, and
corporate permutations from 1977 through most of 1984.5
For almost a decade, John, Robert, and Joseph Mongelli, together with
brothers Frank and John Coppola, owned and operated the Warwick, New York,
headquartered All County.^ In addition, the Mongellis owned several waste
disposal companies I.S.A. of New Jersey, Inc.,'' Tri-State Carting, Inc.,^ Grace
Disposal and Leasing, Ltd.,^ Orange County Sanitation, Inc.,'" and Round Lake
Sanitation Corporation. 11 In testimony before the U.S. Congressional Committee
on Interstate and Foreign Commerce in 1980, two detective sergeants with the
New Jersey State Police, Dirk Ottens and Jack Penny, presented evidence tying the
Mongelli family to Mario Giganti, one of the important leaders of a major
organized crime syndicate known as the "Genovese family."'2 Giganti, the
Mongellis' ultimate boss, was somewhat foolishly listed on the payroll of Round
Lake Sanitation in New York as a solicitor. By 1986, Louis Mongelli was
described as a "reputed...Genovese crime family member."'^ In 1989, John
Coppola became a valued member of a New Jersey gubernatorial campaign
team. It
The Mongellis and their associates were primarily engaged in the illicit
disposal of hazardous waste. In 1977, they took over the Penaluna Road landfll
in Warwick, New York, and dumped toxic waste at will, thereby threatening
 64 BLOCK

Greenwood Lake, a source of drinking water for around one million northern New
Jersey and New York inhabitants. I.S. A. trailers were spotted unloading drums of
sludge composed of oil, grease, and degreasers, while a Grace Disposal worker
was on hand to flatten the empty drums. Other information clearly showed
industrial waste from a nearby Ford plant was also disposed of at the landll.
Finally, the Newark Star Ledger reported that "thousands of gallons of
'solvents...paint and pigment residues...dirty thinners...still bottoms...glue resi-
due' and other organic, toxic compounds were picked up from industries in New
Jersey and slated for disposal at Warwick.'''^ To cover their tracks, the criminals
created phony records indicating some of these wastes went to a "safe" landfill that
did not actually exist, and to another that had no record of receiving any ofthe toxic
products, even though it probably did.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) ordered
the Penaluna landfill closed in 1980. Grace Disposal went out of business and the
site, reported Assemblyman Hinchey, "which is 36 acres in size and 50 feet deep,
is now leaching organic chemicals and the toxic metals cadmium, lead, and
mercury into a stream and wetland that feed Greenwood Lake." The estimated
toxic leachate, according to the DEC, was 7,200 gallons per day.
In the summer of 1979, All County moved some of its operations to New
Jersey, though it still maintained a significant presence in New York. It bought
several storage facilities in the town of Edgewater, on the shore of the Hudson
River, and another in Newark. It did not inform New Jersey authorities about the
Edgewater facihties. They were discovered by New Jersey's Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP) over a year later. By the spring of 1983, the
Mongellis and their partners had a long list of hazardous waste violations in the
State of New Jersey. From Edgewater, All County improperly disposed of
hazardous waste at Mount Marion, New York. It continued its past practice with
waste from the Mobil Chemical Company in Edison, New Jersey, carting it to
Wayne, Pennsylvania. It also hooked up with a New Jersey firm, S & W Waste,
that hobnobbed with racketeers and top state politicians. '6 In one deal. All County
delivered PCBs to S & W even though it was not licensed to receive them. Other
similar All County violations followed. For example, it delivered 3,338 gallons of
supposedly flammable solvents to a facility in Virginia. Burned three days later,
it was subsequently learned that the shipment was laden with PCBs. Once again.
All County was not authorized to handle PCB wastes and the facility was
forbidden to burn them.
The Coppolas severed their relationship with All Country in the spring of 1983.
At the same moment, the Mongellis sold All County to a former employee, James
Stroin. He had first-class training in illegally disposing of hazardous waste, having
worked at the notorious Kin-Buc landfill in Edison, New Jersey, the largest and
leakiest chemical landfill in the Northeast. It was closed in 1977 when toxic
chemicals from the site were found pouring into the Raritan River, a major
Environmental Crime and Pollution 65

drinking water supply. In this ever so slightly revamped venture, Stroin was joined
by David Rosenberg, who remained at his post of vice president and operations
manager for the firm. It was more of the same: principally the illegal disposal of
PCBs. Stroin and Rosenberg only lasted in business about eight months because
they were caught sending PCBs from the same facility to the Virginia firm that had
illegally burned them for the Mongellis.
All County, under the ownership of the Mongellis and Coppola, had other
criminal business associates. One was RA-MAR Waste Management, owned by
another Coppola brother, Ralph. This firm specialized in septic tank cleaning and
waste-oil collection. RA-MAR serviced Westchester, Orange, and Rockland
Counties in New York and was headquartered in New York and New Jersey. RA-
MAR'soperatingphilosophy was almost a mirror image of All County's. From the
autumn of 1979 to the summer of 1981, RA-MAR was cited for 20 distinct toxic
waste violations in New Jersey. RA-MAR and All County worked closely together
from time to time.
There was also a strong connection between RA-MAR and two large New
Jersey-based waste-oil recovery companies Noble Oil and Oil Recovery.
Between May 1983 and January 1984, RA-MAR reported taking 695,000 gallons
of waste oil to Noble Oil Company alone. In May 1984, the two waste-oil firms
were indicted for their participation in a "massive operation in which hazardous
chemical wastes were mixed with heating oil and then sold to the public." The
corporate officers, Christopher Grungo (Noble Oil) and Joseph Cucinotta (Oil
Recovery), were charged with conspiracy, theft, deceptive business practices, and
the illegal transportation and disposal of hazardous waste.'^ Nonetheless, in May
1984, RA-MAR's permit to haul waste oil to Noble Oil and Oil Recovery was
renewed by New York State's environmental agency.
"Although All County Environmental Service Corporation is not presently in
operation," Assemblyman Hinchey noted back in 1984, "the Mongellis and
Coppolas still operate waste disposal businesses in New York State." He added,
"Round Lake Sanitation collects garbage in Orange, Ulster, and Sullivan Coun-
ties," and Round Lake and another Mongelli/Coppola business, Tri-State Carting
Corporation, "are currently permitted by DEC to transport industrial wastes." ISA
of New Jersey was still hauling garbage in Orange County, New York. Obviously,
the Mongellis were not deterred by their past legal difficulties or by Assemblyman
Hinchey's report.
The final section of the report contained Hinchey's suggestions. All of these
facts, he wrote, establish the need for "significant changes in the solid waste
permitting program as well as further investigation of specific corporations and
individuals who are chronic violators of the Environmental Conservation Law and
who associate with businesses having similar backgrounds." Hinchey wanted a
tough "permit program to regulate private garbage haulers," an absolute "prohi-
bition on the approval of permits to individuals who simultaneously operate
 66 BLOCK

hazardous and solid waste disposal companies," and a meaningful review of

DEC s authority from the New York State Legislature to deny and revoke permits.
Hinchey's ideas did not take root, at least in his estimation. His committee
continued to bedevil the New York (and federal) regulators through the early
1990s with reports and hearings that proved the regulators, at least, were not
paying very much attention to significant criminal polluters.'
In one remarkable case, Hinchey's chief investigator, Arthur John Woolston-
Smith, determined that an organized crime felon, Frank Sacco, was running a
landfill in the Hudson Valley town oif Tuxedo, about 30 miles north of the city.
Sacco had past convictions and prison sentences dating back 45 years that included
an assault (stemming from an arrest for rape), extortion, loan sharking, witness
tampering, robbery, dealing in stolen securities, and an escape from prison, to
mention a few. The town's Justice of the Peace leased the site to Sacco. Others
involved with Sacco in this deal were a former assistant district attorney, the
Tuxedo police chief, and a DEC official who took bribes from Sacco and ended
up as his mistress. >9 When Sacco's landfill was finally closed, shallow groundwa-
ter monitoring established arsenic, iron, manganese, and selenium at levels in
violation of drinking water standards. Substantial concentrations of lead were
found, as well as moderate levels of toluene, benzene, xylene, trichloroethylene,
ethylbenzene, carbon disulfide, and z-butanone. The hazardous wastes at the site
were attributable to "petroleum contaminated waste soils and waste contaminated
with industrial solvents."20 The dead body discovered in the landfill was one of
Sacco's employees.21
The Mongellis were finally run to ground by federal authorities in the 1990s,
although not because there was a structured inquiry into criminal waste firms. It
began because an FBI agent used to take his morning coffee in a restaurant next
to a Mongelli facility. The agent became upset with the odors wafting into the
coffee shop and determined to find out who or what was causing his morning
nausea. That led to several queries and those eventually led to an investigation.22
As a result, in October 1991 the Mongellis were indicted on federal racketeering
charges for paying off the "Genovese crime family and trying to bribe a state
environmental official."23 Also indicted were the following Mongelli companies:
Round Lake Sanitation, I.S.A. in New Jersey, Orange County Sanitation, Conti-
nental Technology, Lake Region Service Garage, and AAA Recycling. The
Mongelli's, according to the FBI and Otto G. Obermaier, the U.S. attorney from
the Southern District of New York, "siphoned millions of dollars in cash from their
businesses" using "a number of intermediaries to 'launder funds' for them" for
nefarious purposes. They were caught in an undercover operation offering bribes
"ranging as high as $500,000 for the first year and $300,000 for each succeeding
year" to a detective posing as a high-ranking DEC official.24 They wanted another
landfill. It would take several years before the case was settled and the Mongellis
punished.
Environmental Crime and Pollution 67

National Firms: Illicit Behaviors

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, three sanitation firms, one in Boston, another
in Chicago, the third in Houston, began a process of rapid expansion. Their growth
took place in tandem with the full blossoming of the environmental movement in
the U.S., which forced the government to create the Environmental Protection
Agency in 1970 and to pass important legislation dealing with toxic waste disposal
during that decade. The Boston firm, SCA Services, did not quite make it to the
top. It was publicly burned for its involvement with organized criminals in New
Jersey and corporate leaders with exceptionally sticky fingers.
In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations in 1980 and 1981, a former gangster detailed SCA's
complicity with organized crime. At one hearing, the Committee summed up his
testimony about SCA's expansion, noting that in its expansion in the early 1970s,
it bought small garbage firms and gave the owners stock in SCA and an
employment contract to continue operating their former firms as before. The
gangster pointed out, somewhat inarticulately, what this meant in New Jersey: "So
you have the same people that individually were controlled by organized crime
into SCA."25 SCA's reputation took an exceptional drubbing in December 1980,
six days after the subcommittee's first hearing featuring the reformed felon's
dissection of SCA's ties to organized crime. This time it was tied to an organized
crime homicide. On December 22, "Crescent Roselle, general manager of Waste
Disposal, Inc., one of SCA's largest New Jersey subsidiaries, was brutally
murdered in a gangland-style execution," shot numerous times while sitting in his
car outside his company office.26 In the subcommittee's May 1981 hearing, a New
Jersey law enforcement official bluntly stated that SCA had other subsidiaries that
were managed by mobsters.2''
The other two national (in time, international) companies, Chicago's Waste
Management Inc. (WMI) and Houston's Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI), fared
far better than did SCA. Their chiefs quickly stepped to the level of the very rich.
Waste Management and Browning-Ferris did have their bumpy moments. In the
past three decades, each has pled either guilty or nolo contendere to various
charges ranging from environmental malpractice to shady business activities.
Each has aggressively maintained, however, that these problems were the result
of simple mistakes, common industry errors, or isolated acts carried out by lower-
level employees who misbehaved without the knowledge of the organization's
leadership.
In a massive class-action civil case against Waste Management, Waste
Management of North America, Waste Management Partners, and Browning-
Ferris, filed in summer 1988, however, a far different picture emerged. There were
seven named plaintiffs in this case: (1) Cumberland Farms, an operator of
convenience stores throughout the United States; (2) Kirschner Brothers Oil Co.,
68 BLOCK

a marketer of petroleum products; (3) Dan Rosenberg, d/b/a Animal Hospital of

Chester County, an individual who operates an animal hospital; (4) George
Gusses, an individual who operates a business; (5) the Perry Corporation; (6)
Uncle Donald's, d/b/a Huey's; and (7) Overton Pub, d/b/a East End Pub. The suit
was based on alleged violations of Title 1 ofthe Sherman Anti-Trust Act. In it, the
named plaintiffs and the class they represented, who "have directly purchased, in
the course of their business, containerized solid waste removal and disposal
services from one or more of the defendants, their wholly-owned subsidiaries,
affiliates, and alleged co-conspirators,"28 were all customers of either WMI or
BFI. The plaintiffs attorneys alleged that WMI and BFI "engaged in an extensive
pattern of anticompetitive activity across the United States," engineered and
directed by their "national and regional officers."29 In a 111-page memorandum
developed in 1990 that successfully defeated a motion by the defendants for a
summary judgment, the plaintiffs' attorneys started with 10 key points:
1. George Farris, BFI's chief financial officer, met with Donald Flynn,
WMI's chief financial officer, and with Harold Gershowitz, WMF s
senior vice president. Flynn and Gershowitz disclosed that, in view of the
fact that "the environment for price increases is improving," WMI
planned to implement a "4-5%" national price increase over the next few
years. This one meeting alone compels the denial of defendants' motion.
2. A government memorandum reported that criminal price-fixing by the
defendants in Atlanta "can be attributed to more than overly aggressive
local managers" and was "probably directed by corporate officials from
the company headquarters."
3. A sworn declaration from a BFI sales manager describes how John
Drury, then BFI's executive vice-president, orchestrated price-fixing
activities in Atlanta.
4. A former BFI executive testified that BFI's national director of labor
relations told him to "get together with Waste Management" and end a
price war in Ohio.
5. Ed Drury, BFI's national vice president, directed price fixing in the
Arrowhead region (Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and several Canadian
provinces).30
6. John Drury, BFI's president, personally appointed John Pinto as vice
president to head BFI's northeast region. Pinto had clear ties to organized
crime and was subsequently indicted and pled guilty to bid rigging, price
fixing, and bribery of officials.
7. John Drury, BFI's president, assigned a new district manager to Pitts-
burgh with instructions that the sales manager report directly to him. The
Environmental Crime and Pollution 69

district manager proceeded to engage in price-fixing and bid rigging, and

periodically delivered suitcases of cash generated from these activities to
Houston for use as payoffs to public officials.
8. A BFI salesperson testified that she was not permitted to solicit WMI
customers and when she attended sales meetings with salespersons from
other districts, learned that it was a company-wide policy.
9. Both BFI and WMI encouraged price-fixing by actively promoting
employees who engaged in it. Bruce Ranck, for example, was a principal
target of a state antitrust prosecution (which BFI settled for $350,000)
and federal antitrust prosecution (to which BFI pled guilty and paid a one
million dollar fine). Notwithstanding his involvement in illegal activity,
Ranck was promoted and now holds the position of executive vice-
president of BFI, with responsibility for all of BFI's North American
solid waste operations.
10. BFI's vice chairman and national director of marketing, Norman Myers,
paid a bribe to defeat a competitor's landfill application, and then
attempted to conceal this payment.^!
Plaintiffs' attorneys went into the history of WMI, pointing out that WMFs
predecessor firms belonged to the Chicago Suburban Refuse Disposal Corpora-
tion (CSRDC) through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Nearly all the private
waste companies in Chicago were part of CSRDC and operated under a system
called the "Chicago Rules," which added up to precisely the same system of
"property rights" discovered by Senator McClellan in his New York racketeer
investigation.32 Furthermore, it was asserted that as soon as WMI was formed in
1968 and BFI in 1969, they started to buy CSRDC companies. "As members of
the Chicago families became absorbed into WMI and BFI," the plaintiffs'
memorandum holds, "the 'Chicago rules' became a national code of conduct."33
In terms of the structure of waste malfeasance, the mobsters in New York and
New Jersey ruled through the "property rights" system and, importantly, through
their control of private landfills (although illegal entry to municipal landfills
through bribes has been a constant as well).34 The Pennsylvania case alleges that
WMI and BFI did the same. "The defendants have gone to extraordinary lengths
to obtain control of landfills," the plaintiffs' counsel argued, "including the
bribing of state officials."35
The plaintiffs' claims were further buttressed by a detailed and damning series
of cases thatincluded examples from the 1970s and 1980s. There were bribery and
price-fixing cases, including a 1987 case in Ohio that alleged BFI and WMI
subsidiaries engaged in price-fixing and "customer allocation" in violation of the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The companies pled guilty and each paid a one million
dollarfine.36In the five-year period before the filing of the Pennsylvania case, it
was pointed out that "federal prosecutors convened grand juries to investigate
 70 BLOCK

anticompetitive conduct by BFI or WMI subsidiaries in Rochester, New York;

Toledo, Ohio; Orange County, California; San Diego County, California; Mem-
phis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Orlando, Florida; Jacksonville, Florida;
Phoenix, Arizona; Kansas City, Missouri; Oahu, Hawaii; Pittsburgh, Pennsylva-
nia; and Columbus, Ohio."37 Most of the fines were below one million dollars and
had no effect on the companies' earnings.
Infact,from 1977 to 1989, WMFsgross income wentfrom$60 million to$850
million, and BFI's zoomed from $33 million to $423 million. The chief operating
officers' earnings were spectacular. From 1987 to 1989, WMFs chief executive
officer, chief operating officer, and treasurer received compensation packages of
$12.8 milhon, $16.3 million, and $25.1 million respectively. In 1989, their
personal holdings in WMI stock had a value of $117 million, $38 million, and $33
million.38
To drive home the plaintiffs' point that the price-fixing conspiracy was
national, the memorandum claims to have "hard, documentary evidence that the
highest ranking officers at BFI and WMI met to exchange information regarding
future pricing."39 Supposedly, they met under the guise of what they called "The
Splinter Group ofthe New York Society." In their summation, plaintiffs' attorneys
noted that WMFs chief financial officer and its senior vice president, and BFI's
senior vice president attended these meetings. There they shared information on
"future marketing plans...bids on future projects, expansion plans, anticipated
capital expenditures, profit margins, and dividend policies."'*o
There is little doubt that the plaintiffs' suit had merit and it established that at
least part of organized crime's methodology of control in the waste arena, so
strongly and repeatedly condemned, has hkely been common waste industry
practice. At the center nestled "property rights/Chicago rules." Corporate expan-
sion, on the other hand, was engineered through "predatory pricing" practices
designed to drive uncooperative small firms to the wall. As Professor Howard
Smith describes it, "a price is predatory if it is below the seller's otherwise profit-
maximizing price and is charged for the purpose of eliminating competition in the
short run and reducing competition in the long run."4i Once that is accomplished
and a monopoly, or more likely, an oligopoly achieved, prices rocket up. On
October 30, 1990, Waste Management agreed to pony up $19.5 million and
Browning-Ferris $30.5 million to settle the antitrust case.42

Cumberland Farms: Sins of the Plainti'

The above discussion should not be taken to mean that the first named plaintiff
in the case, Cumberland Farms, was itself a "clean" company. The company
started life in 1938 as a roadside milk and egg business in Cumberland, Rhode
Island. A Greek immigrant, Vasilios Haseotes, owned the stand and turned it into
a convenience store. It eventually became the nation's third-largest convenience
store chain, and the largest independent gasoline retailer in the 1980s. It reached
Environmental Crime and Pollution 11

the top after buying most of Chevron's and Gulfs northeast marketing facilities
for around $350 miUion. This purchase gave Cumberland an additional 3,373
jobber and dealer supply contracts, and 20 terminals.''3 Clearly, this was its high
point. On January 7,1991, Cumberland was sued by the Department of Justice and
the Environmental Protection Agency for "unlawfully filled wetlands."'''' More
bad news came that summer. The Philadelphia Inquirerr&poTted that Cumberland
Farms coerced "its convenience-store employees to confess to thefts they had not
committed."''5 In the spring of 1992, Cumberland filed for Chapter 11 protection.'>6
Several years later, Cumberland lost a suit to Goldman Sachs for stealing thi'ee
million barrels of oil from Goldman's trading unit, J. Aron. This was the
culmination of years of legal wrangling and payouts by Cumberland to Goldman.
Earlier, Goldman had recovered approximately $41 million from Cumberland,
which it accused of "unauthorized blending, burning, and outright theft of about
5% of the 57 million barrels that J. Aron processed."'''^ More dreary environmental
news was still to come, including Cumberland's neglectful running of an air-
polluting refinery in Newfoundland.''^

The Changing New York Market and Waste Consolidation

During the 1990s, New York prosecutors, particularly Robert Morgenthau, the
New York County (Manhattan) district attorney, finally took on the task of busting
organized crime's dominance in the private New York waste market. They
successfully prosecuted some and sued others from the underworld of waste and
their trade associations (including The Greater New York Waste Paper Associa-
tion, The Kings County Trade Waste Association, the Association of Trade Waste
removers of Greater New York, and The Queens County Trade Waste Associa-
tion).''9 In this complicated and long investigation, BFI played an undercover role
in the demise of the organized crime cartel. With BFI's permission, Morgenthau
placed an agent into its New York operation. Evidence was gathered on the mob's
tactics in an attempt to chase the firm from the city. BFI trucks were tailed, stolen,
and disabled. Executives endured threatening phone calls and letters.^o In June
1995, Morgenthau's 114-count indictment ended the siege. Almost two years
later, BFI bought the Manhattan routes and trucks of one of the mob outfits. Five
Bros. Carting Co, whose owner, Michael D'Ambrosio, was secretly recorded
telling Morgenthau's undercover agent that BFI was "a bug that needed to be
crushed.''^' D'Ambrosio pled guilty to "enterprise corruption." He was fined one
million dollars and sentenced to prison.
The giants (BFI and WMI) had finally broken into the New York solid waste
market, the nation's largest. Joining them in New York were a fast-rising firm
named USA Waste Services and a smaller conglomerate. Eastern Environmental
Services, with deep ties to the largely criminal New Jersey scene. Though some
in New York talked about stasis in the newly consolidated market, remarkable
changes were on the way.
72 BLOCK

The most stunning development was a merger between WMI and USA Waste.
In 1998, "old" WMI was "acquired by smaller rival USA Waste Services Inc. for
stock valued at about $13.5 bilhon." Although the new company would still be
called Waste Management, it would be run by the leaders of USA Waste, with its
main corporate office in Houston.52 The result of the logic of consolidation, cost
reductions were achieved by consolidating routes and sacking "redundant"
employees.53 The move was carried out by USA Waste's chairman, John Drury,
the former BFI president who was identified as a key director of the long price-
fixing conspiracy with WMI in the Cumberland Farms et al. case.

Consolidation's Odd Twists and Turns: The Return ofthe Irrepressible

In 1990, Drury quit BFI in a disagreement over policy issues. Three years later,
he was asked to head USA Waste. He took the post in 1994 and mandated "no
recycHng, no overseas ventures."^'' Under Drury, USA Waste was on the prowl for
other waste companies. In 1995, it gobbled up Chambers Development, "which
had 50 collection operations in eight Atlantic seaboard states." The following year
it bought out a California-based firm that also operated in Texas, Louisiana,
Arkansas, Colorado, and Florida. Around the same time, USA Waste announced
it would buy another waste conglomerate. United Waste Systems, based in
Connecticut. The Connecticut firm had purchased five waste collection businesses
and two transfer stations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania the year
before.55 On the last day of 1998, Drury bought out Eastern Environmental
Services.56 Now only two major competitors remained "in the multibillion-doUar
trash disposal market in New York City and...in cities in Pennsylvania and
Florida," said a somewhat concerned Justice Department, which nevertheless
allowed the deal to go through after Eastern and Waste Management shed some
companies in several states.^^ Eastern had just acquired several allegedly "former"
mob trash firms in New Jersey, and two Florida firms. One beneficiary of the
Waste Management-Eastern deal was an emerging trash conglomerate. Republic
Services, headed by Wayne Huizenga, who was responsible for the original
creation of Waste Management in Chicago. Huizenga, like Drury, had taken time
off from garbage. However, he spent his off time creating Blockbuster Video, the
nation's largest video rental company, and buying a professional sports team or
two, a stadium here and there. Republic picked up some ofthe discarded firms and
was well on its way to becoming another major player in the wildly consolidating
waste world.

USA Waste: Two Sleazy Background Issues

USA Waste was pushed into the very big leagues of waste, before its deal with
Waste Management, through its purchase of United Waste Systems, which came
to life in 1989 under the aggressive leadership of its 33-year-old chairman and
Environmental Crime and Pollution 73

CEO, Bradley S. Jacobs.s By 1992, United had landfills and composting and
recycling centers in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kentucky,
Mississippi, Michigan, and Connecticut. Despite these activities, it had lost $4.5
million since 1990. Nonetheless, some observers thought its prospects were
promising, for United raised $36 million in new capital in 1992 through an Initial
Public Offering (IPO) of its stock. It planned to spend the money on five new
acquisitions.59

LThe Meditative Bradley Jacobs

Chairman Jacobs' background was somewhat baffling. According to the

Hartford Courant (Connecticut) newspaper, Jacobs' CEO experience started in
1979, at the age of 23, with Amerex Oil Associates, which had its corporate offices
in Morristown, New Jersey.60 From 1984 to July 1989, he headed up an interna-
tional trading company based in England, Hamilton Resources (UK) Ltd.^' What
Jacobs did for, or with, Amerex or Hamilton Resources is not noted in any
published account of his background. It seems there was much to hide, for he had
worked with a cast of Europeans and Americans suspected of illicitly selling toxic
waste to the impoverished West African country of Benin, making night runs of
toxic waste to other West African countries, and likely selling oil to South Africa
while the U.N.-sponsored embargo of oil to Pretoria was running.
To attempt to unravel this suspected misbehavior and place it into perspective,
one must go back to a company called Pan Ocean Oil, which started in 1970 with
$16 million in cash. Six years later, after it finally hit pay dirt drilling in the North
Sea, Marathon Oil bought it for $260 million.'52 In the extremely complex structure
of an oil major. Pan Ocean's ownership had been in the hands of Marathon's
wholly owned subsidiary, Interocean Oil. This entity became, or was subdivided
into afirmcalled Interocean Oil (Nigeria). On November 1,1982, all of Interocean ' s
stock was sold and its interest in what was by then Pan Ocean Oil (Nigeria) was
"transferred" to Impex Ltd., afirmincorporated in Anguilla, a small and somewhat
notorious island nation in the British West Indies.63 Anguilla's notoriety is based
on its penchant for allowing a host of criminals, many in the narcotics business,
to establish phony banks, some no more than trailers in goat pastures.
Pan Ocean next turned up as a series of interrelated firms: Panoco Group,
PNOcean (supposedly with offices in New York and Houston), Panoco Interna-
tional, Panoco (Geneva), Panoco (Nigeria), and Panoco (Benin). To muddy the
waters a little more, a Panoco entity was affiliated with the United States Oil Co.,
based in New York, whose director also ran Panoco (Geneva), which, it was
reported, "operates in Nigeria through Pan Ocean Oil (Nigeria).64 The Geneva-
based Panoco, and I presume all the rest including Impex in Anguilla, were
directed by an Italian, Vittorio Fabbri, who had an office at 375 Park Avenue, New
York. Standing behind Fabbri as the owner of most of the above entities was
supposedly another Italian named Bellini.
74 BLOCK

British journalists from Box Television tie Bradley Jacobs to this group, since
Fabbri supposedly introduced him to the pleasures and potential profits of selling
European and American hazardous waste to Benin. In 1985, Panoco (Geneva)
persuaded the Benin authorities to scuttie a contract with Saga Petroleum, a private
Norwegian oil company, and instead to contract with Panoco (Benin).65 It was the
beginning of a very convoluted series of deals, unraveled principally by Box
reporter Adam Kemp, that ultimately led to Jacobs. Kemp found that the Republic
of Benin agreed to receive about five million tons of toxic waste a year for 10 years
for a "mere two dollars and 50 cents a ton." The contact was signed with a Gibraltar
company named SESCO. Looking for SESCO led Kemp to London's elegant
Eaton Square and Hamilton Resources, which was listed in the phone directory as
a "Local Listening Post for Crude Oil Market." A little sleuthing turned up an item
from Greenpeace, which accused Hamilton of involvement in a "possible dump-
ing deal" with impoverished Guinea Bissau. Hamilton issued a denial stating, "our
company has never made any attempt to build a landfill" there. Kemp went to
Companies House in London, where he discovered that almost all the shares of
Hamilton Resources were owned by Hamilton Resources (Gibraltar). Moreover,
Hamilton and SESCO used the same registered office, Finsbury Management, in
Gibraltar. Documents showed that SESCO and Hamilton (Gibraltar) had ap-
pointed, at the same time, two other firms as directors "Amwell Servicing and
Tikka Overseas Amwell Services, in the British Virgin Islands." A check of
documents in Washington, D.C., revealed SESCO correspondence signed by
Josephine Mandel, apparently a company director. She subsequently appeared as
the company secretary of Hamilton Resources UK Ltd. Hamilton's records listed
her address as "Lima, Peru." Not unexpectedly, inquiries in Lima to find her were
fruitless.
London's Hamilton Resources listed a Jill Aldridge as another director. She
had an address in Holland that turned out to be a Transcendental Meditation study
center run by followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Aldridge had lived there, but
left a few months before Kemp arrived in Holland looking for her. Box Television
reportedly found her working at Roydon Hall, the "cult's headquarters" in Kent.
Bradley Jacobs was also known as a devotee of Transcendental Meditation. Kemp
called Jacobs, who admitted he knew the name Jill Aldridge and then rang off.
Benin was the last stop in this puzzling investigation. Benin's self-styled
Marxist President, Mathieu Kerekou, had signed a contract with SESCO's
representative. Lamia Catche, for a 10-year toxics deal. In other Benin govern-
ment documents, however, Mme. Catche is "named as Executive Vice President
of the Group Hamilton Resources." Kemp gathered increasing evidence that
proved Bradley Jacobs had put together a three-part transnational toxic waste
dumping scheme. First, a network of waste brokers was created to scour factories in
Europe for product; second, SESCO was formed to do the same in the United States;
and third, MJ Carter Associates was retained to help plan a huge landfill in Benin.
Environmental Crime and Pollution 75

The waste intended for Benin was described as "very, very volatile solvents,
which would fairly readily burst into flame." There were also herbicides, methyl-
ene chloride, and degreasing solutions made of "organo-chloride compounds" that
were guaranteed to evaporate under the African sun and thus pose a serious health
hazard to landfill workers and the many people living on the perimeter ofthe site.
Benin's alarmed health minister, Andre Atchade, wrote the following to President
Kerekou: "These schemes are disastrous for our country and constitute a threat to
the safety of our land and people.... We should remember Chernobyl." The
president fired him and then placed him under house arrest for his audacity. Jacobs
first denied having anything to do with the project. He told Kemp, "you know, it's
a farce; it's like a total farce." Later, however, he admitted his involvement.

2. Eastern Environmental: The Saga ofthe Unwelcome Ash

Another USA Waste purchase. Eastern Environmental, had a problem stem-
ming from the dumping of toxic waste in the Third World. In 1988, between 2,000
and 5,000 tons of Philadelphia's toxic incinerator ash were dumped on the beaches
of the Haitian coastal town of Gonaives.^^ The ash was the property of a waste
disposal outfit, Joseph Paohno and Sons. That firm had taken over a six million
dollar contract to dispose of Philadelphia's ash, which "contained lead, cadmium,
barium, arsenic, mercury, dioxin, and cyanide.''^'' Paolino hired Amalgamated
Shipping of the Bahamas, which engaged the ship Khian Sea to carry the ash
somewhere in the Caribbean. The ship left port on August 1986 with approxi-
mately 14,000 tons of ash. It tried to unload in the Bahamas but failed. Then it spent
almost two years in limbo trying to find some Caribbean country that would make
the deal. In the last week of October 1987, Haiti's Department of Commerce
granted permission for the ship to unload on the beach at Gonaives. Within a few
days, however, the Haitian government, in particular the Minister of Commerce,
announced a change in policy and wished to cancel the permit. It was too late. The
ship was gone and part of Philadelphia's ash lay on the beach.^^
About 10,000 tons remained on board when the Khian Sea slipped out of
Haitian waters. The ship tried repeatedly to find a country to accept the cargo. It
underwent suspicious name changes and sailed to the Mediterranean to try several
spots, including Suez. Finally, somewhere between Suez and Singapore, it
offloaded the rest of Philadelphia's ash.
Years later, the New York Trade Waste Commission, a new regulatory
agency put in place by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to help combat mobster control
of the waste industry, found a connection between Eastern Environmental and
Joseph Paolino and Sons, and thus the toxic ash. The head of Eastern and its
largest shareholder is Louis D. Paolino, one of Joseph's sons. The old man had
died in 1984, but the firm continued. In 1991, it was charged with various crimes
related to cheating its workers out of wages and benefits. In 1995, it was fined by
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for having radioactive material without a
76 BLOCK

permit. After that, it seems to have disappeared. The Trade Waste Commission
determined that Eastern would not be licensed to operate in the city until it helped
to clean up Gonaives. Although everyone involved seems to deny a connection
between the Paolino company and Eastern Environmental, beyond the genetic.
Eastern finally agreed to pay two-thirds of the costs to remove the ash from
Haiti.69

3. Serious Strains in the Marriage

The waste industry is so volatile that centralization soon began to crack a bit.
At the turn of the millennium, the new Waste Management filed a lawsuit
concerning its $1.3 billion purchase of Eastern Environmental, which it was
alleged, "overstated its profits."'70 John Drury, who by August 1999 had become
Waste Management's former chairman and CEO, was also named in the suit, as
was Rodney Proto, WMF s former president, sacked at the same time Drury
retired. Drury, who was quite ill, and Proto were thought to have "personally"
benefited from "deals with Eastern's chairman, Louis Paolino." In this alleged
scam, in the autumn of 1995, Paolino, then a vice-president of USA Waste, joined
with several others to buy outEastern Environmental; they took control of Eastern
in 1966 and began "a systematic accounting fraud which caused the operating
performance of Eastern to be regularly and materially overstated."7i

Reflections

Two main methodologies have long characterized the U.S. waste industry:
property rights and predatory pricing.72 Nearly all the firms, from those controlled
by organized crime to the Giants, have been guilty of one or both of these offenses.
In addition, they have all been guilty of recklessly dumping toxic waste into leaky
landfills and faulty incinerators.^s Every one who understands the waste industry
knows this. Even a generally sympathetic story in Fortune magazine about BFI
noted that its reputation in the 1980s was odious. The magazine described the
company as "entangled in price-fixing and pollution cases from Louisiana to
Niagara Ealls." A New York State congressional report held BFI's methods to be
virtually the same as those used by "organized-crime carters."'74 This statement
was only partially accurate, however. The Giants were addicted to national and
international expansion Waste Management operated in Saudi Arabia as early
as the 1970s while the sway of the various crime cartels in waste was local or
regional. The few mob firms seeking landfills much further afield were usually
knocked about by citizen's environmental groups and, from time to time, state law
enforcement. Local papers, often in rural Midwestern or Appalachian counties,
had a field day printing stories about how the New York Mafia was invading their
town or county. The value of a "bad reputation" was not very useful when it came
to expansion outside the Northeast, with an occasional exception.
Environmental Crime and Pollution 77

The organized crime companies did not go public; they sold no stock. Their
companies were, to put it mildly, closely held. This was at least partially done to
keep their books from the prying eyes of outsiders. Although some profited greatly
from their business acumen, they also had a penchant for stealing worker's
benefits from their controlled Teamster locals. Thus, they could never match the
kind of capital that the Giants routinely raised. Waste Management and BFI were
public companies; their stock was traded on the Exchange. The gangsters' forte
was more along the line of extortion, and they lived in a perilous environment of
their own.
The Giants were ruthless in their zeal for growth. They were very aggressive
when accused of criminal behavior and were not at all reluctant to sue critics for
besnrching their good names. Their executives did not have "rap sheets."
Predatory pricing was their main methodology and that meant antitrust violations.
No one, except the victims, equated those sorts of activities as examples of real
racketeering. Even in the two examples of the past flirtations of USA's affiliates
with Third World despots to unload their toxic products at bargain basement
prices, little reaction was aroused. Indeed, scarcely anyone in the U.S. knew
anything about Jacobs' activities in Benin, his Gibraltar company, or his alter ego
SESCO. Moreover, no one in authority raised much of an eyebrow over what must
have been significant connections between Eastern's current officers and the firm
that dumped ash in Haiti, so long as Eastern paid a large portion of the cleanup.''^

NOTES

1. Originally presented at the Second International Conference for Criminal Intelligence

Analysis, "Assessing Tomorrow's Challenges Today," sponsored by the Royal Institute of Interna-
tional Affairs, National Criminal Intelligence Service, Interpol, London, England, March 1999.
2. U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field,
Hearing: Organized Crime in the New York Private Carting Industry (Washington, D.C.: Government
Printing Office, 1957; 6672).
3. Alan A. Block and William J. Chambliss, Organizing Crime (New York: Elsevier, 1981: 14-
15).
4. Donald Reid, Paris Sewers and Sewermen: Realities and Representations (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991: 169-170).
5. Maurice D. Hinchey, Chairman, the New York State Assembly Standing Committee on
Environmental Conservation, Criminal Infiltration of the Toxic and Solid Waste Disposal Industries
in New YorkState (Albany, NY: September 13,1984); also Alan A. Block (ed.). The Business of Crime:
A Documentary Study of Organized Crime in the American Economy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1991: Chapter 7; 175-196).
6. John R. Coppola, Vice President, All County Service Corporation, "Application to Dispose
of Solid Waste at the Orange County Solid Waste Disposal Facilities" (October 24, 1974).
7. New York State, Senate Select Committee on Crime (July 7, 1980: 518); Robert Mongelli,
I.S.A. in New Jersey, Town of Wallkill, "Application for Garbage and Refuse Permit" (December 13,
1981, January 16,1984); Joseph Mongelli, I.S.A. in New Jersey, Town of Wallkill, "Application for
Garbage and Refuse Permit" (1983).
78 BLOCK

8. See Vic Wehnan, Environmentat Conservation officer, to David Archibald, New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation, Memorandum (May 12, 1980).
9. Robert A. Mongelli, Grace Disposal and Leasing, Ltd., New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation, "Application for the Operation of a Solid Waste Management Facility"
(February 18, 1978).
10. Robert Mongelli, Orange County Sanitation, Town of Wallkill, "Application for Garbage and
Refuse Permit" (December 22, 1980, December 17, 1981, 1983, January 16, 1984).
11. Joseph Mongelli, President, Round Lake Sanitation Corporation, "Application to Dispose of
Solid Waste at the Orange County Solid Waste Disposal Facilities" (August 2,1974); Robert Mongelli,
Round Lake Sanitation Corporation, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,
"Application for Septic Tank Cleaner and Industrial Waste Collector Permit" (July 22, 1983).
12. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce
(December 16, 1980: 63-64).
13. See "The Tuxedo Story: A Report from Chairman Maurice D. Hinchey on Illegal Disposal
of Wastes in the Hudson Valley, Pre-Hearing Report of August 30,1989" (p. 4).
14. Ibid.: 3,.
15. Gordon Bishop, Sunday Star-Ledger (April 8, 1979, Section 1: 18).
16. See my testimony on S & W in "On the Need for the Waste Industry Disclosure Law"
(Pennsylvania House of Representatives, the Conservation Committee, Hearings on House Bill 2228,
The Waste Industry Disclosure Law, February 15, 1990).
17. Superior Court of New Jersey, Burlington County, State of New Jersey v. Christoper R.
Grungo et al.. Defendants, Criminal Action XXVII, Law Division Docket No. SGJ-114-83-3,
Burlington County Courthouse, Mount Holly, New Jersey (April 22, 1985).
18. A few ofthe many investigations Hinchey conducted can be found in "A Public Hearing into
the Illegal Disposal of Wastes in the Hudson Valley" (September 19,1989); "A Private Hearing into
the Involvement of Organized Crime in the Waste Disposal Industry" (September 6,1989); "A Public
Hearing into the Illegal Disposal of Wastes and Landfill Problems in the Columbia County Area"
(March 14,1990); and "Illegal Dumping in New York State: Who's Enforcing the Law?" (February
6,1991).
19. See the report from Chairman Maurice D. Hinchey to the New York State Assembly
Committee on Environmental Conservation Concerning Illegal Disposal of Wastes in the Hudson
Valley (February 6, 1991, Appendix C) for Sacco's arrest record, and "The Tuxedo Story," Pre-
Hearing Report of August 30, 1989 (p. 7).
20. Ibid.: 53-54.
21. Ibid.: 6.
22. Author's interviews with FBI Special Agent Jerry W. Hanford, the coffee drinker, working
out of the Bureau's White Plains Office.
23. Lisa W. Foderaro, "New York Trash Haulers Charged with Bribery and Payoffs to Mob"
{New York Times, October 9, 1991).
24. United States Attorney, Southern District of New York, "Outline of Indictment: United States
of America v. Mongelli" (Press Release, October 8, 1991).
25. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations, Report: Hazardous Waste Enforcement (Washington, D.C.: Govern-
ment Printing Office, December 1982: 21).
26. bid: 22.
27. Ibid.: 24.
28. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, "Cumberland Farms,
Inc. et al. v. Browning-Ferris Industries, Inc. et al.. Master File Civil Action No. 87-3717, 120 F. R.
D. 6421 1988 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7484; filed July 21,1988.
29. United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Cumberland Farms, Inc., et
al.. Plaintiffs v. Browning Ferris Industries, Inc., et al.. Defendants, Plaintiffs' Memorandum in
Environmental Crime and Pollution 79

Opposition to Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Master File, No. 87-3717, page 1.
30. Ibid.: 53.
31. Ibid.: 2-3.
32. Ibid.: 6.
33. bid.:!.
34. See, for example, Brian Larkin, "Probers Charge Bribes Opened Landfill's Gates," Staten
tsland Advance (June 16, 1994: 1).
35. United States District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, page 22.
36. tbid.: 13.
37. tbid.: 15.
38. Ibid.: 16.
39. Ibid.: 23.
40. Ibid.: 94.
41. Howard Smith, "Hidden Graves: Predatory Pricing and Organized Crime" (Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Pennsylvania State University. 1999: 107).
42. Larry Carpenter, Undersheriff, Ventura County, California, Sheriff's Department, "Waste
Management Report" (Attachment 4, September 20, 1991: 5).
43. J. Richard Shaner, "Cumberland Farms: Is It Changing Identities?" (National Petroleum
News 80,11, October 1988: 66).
44. "Justice Department Sues Cumberland Farms for Wetlands Violations" (Business Wire,
January 7. 1991).
45. Associated Press (August 20, 1991 ).
46. National Petroleum News (April 1993).
47. James Norman, "Goldman Wins $21 Mil Suit over Cumberland Theft" (Platt 's Oitgram News
75,98, May 21, 1997: 1).
48. Peter GuUage. "Come-By-Chance Refinery Vows to Cut Emissions" (Platt's Oilgram News,
August 5, 1998).
49. Superior Court of the State of New York, County of New York, Robert M. Morgenthau,
District Attorney of New York County. Plaintiff-Claiming Authority, against Frank Alloca, VA
Sanitation Inc., et al.. Order to Show Cause and Temporary Restraining Order with Supporting Papers
(CPLR ART. 13-A), June 19, 1995.
50. Philip S. Angel, "Cleaning Up New York" (Infrastructure Finance, May 1, 1997).
51. Steve Daniels, "BFI Purchases Midsize New York City Hauler" (Waste News, March 17,
1997: 2).
52. "Houston-Based USA Waste Services to Acquire Waste Management" (Duluth News
Tribune,March 12, 1998).
53. Ibid
54. Forei (June 2, 1997).
55. Solid Waste Report (May 11,1995).
56. "Waste Management Completes Eastern Deal" (Greenwire, January 4, 1999).
57. See the Miami Herald and the Associated Press (January 1,1999).
58. Jim Roberts, "Investors Welcome Micro Warehouse, United Waste IPOs" (Fairfield County
Business Journal, December 28, 1992, Sec. 1: 1).
59. bid.
60. State of Delaware, 1982 Annual Franchise Tax Report, Amerex Oil Associates, Inc., File
Number 8590-38, filed February 3, 1983.
61. "Corporate Facts: United Waste Systems Inc." (Hartford Courant, September 25, 1995,
Business Weekly Section: 4).
62. "Nigeria" (Platt's Oilgram News, February 28, 1983: 3).
63. "Companies" (Oil and Gas Journal, March 7, 1983: 46).
64. Journal of Commerce (December 2i, 1987).
 80 BLOCK

65. "Saga Protests Benin Ouster: Creditors Losing $60 Million in Offshore Venture" (Platt's
OilgramNews, September 16, 1985: 1).
66. James Ridgeway, with Gaelle Drevet, "Dumping on Haiti: How Thousands of Tons of
Philadelphia's Toxic Waste Ended Up on a Haitian Beach and What the City of New York Is Doing
About It" (The Village Voice, January 13, 1998).
67. Ibid.
68. bid.
69. Ibid.
70. "Waste Management Lawsuit Alleges Fraud by Acquired Firm" (Philadelphia Inquirer,
January 1, 2000, at www.phillynews.com/inquirer/aOOO/JanOl/business/EASTERNOl.htm).
71. Ibid
72. In a twist, BFI's fear of predatory pricing actually haunted its first attempt to enter the Greater
New York market. In Suffolk County, Long Island, three towns Babylon, Huntington, and Islip
joined together in the 1970s to create the Multi-Town Solid Waste Authority. The goal was to develop
a resource-recovery facility. BFI applied to construct the^facility and made the short list in 1980. BFI's
inclusion likely stetnmed from the activities of Anthony A. Boccaccio, who was an engineer with
Grumman at the same time he worked in "public relations" for Multi-Town. The Grumman connection
was important, for Grumman's Energy Systems held the license for the German VKW mass-burning
technology system. Grumman decided to close down this division and sold the license to BFI. The
royalty agreement gave Grumman the right to receive a fixed percentage on any contract BFI
successfully negotiated using the license. Had this project worked, Grumman would have earned over
two million dollars. In 1982, Multi-Town selectedBFI's subsidiary. Energy Systems, to build the plant.
The entire project was destroyed by political corruption in various quarters, although it took Anthony
Noto, who became a Babylon Town supervisor in 1982, to finally do it in. Without bothering to notify
anyone. Noto hired an Albany firm with no prior experience to provide the technology for the plant.
Noto failed at every important task and made BFI "spend thousands of dollars in overtime for
engineers, attorneys, and accountants." There is no doubt that Long Island's organized crime carters
were afraid of BFI's reputation for predatory pricing, which they believed had just been employed in
upstate New York. They made sure it would not get any kind of a stake on Long Island. State of New
York, Commission of Investigation, The Multi-Town Solid Waste Management Authority and the
Crisis of Solid Waste Management (270 Broadway, New York, NY, October 1984: 60,73).
73. See Alan A. Block, "Into the Abyss of Environmental Policy: The Battle over the World's
Largest Commercial Hazardous Waste Incinerator Located in East Liverpool, Ohio" (Journal of
Human Justice, November 1993).
74. Richard Behar, "Talk About Tough Competition: How Bill Ruckelshaus Is Taking on the
New York Mob" (Fortune, January 15,1996: 93).
75. Many other toxic waste polluting companies exist beyond those mentioned here. The oil
industry seems to breed them. Some important waste oil firms, fuel oil distributors, retail gas and diesel
station owners, and owners of fuel terminals have been major-league polluters. Many sell product laced
with fiammabie toxics, while others pollute through negligence or deliberately to keep costs down.
Additionally, ship-based oil pollution spreads a host of toxic chemicals. There are some 100 to 200
identified carcinogens in every 10,000 pounds of oil released into the oceans. Spills have the immediate
effect of killing waterfowl and mammals. Even more insidiously dangerous, the carcinogens disrupt
the food chain because oil pollution kills the coastal phytoplankton that feed commercial fish, thereby
causing a reduction in harvests. The organisms that survive "introduce the oil toxins into the food chain
as they are consumed." See Paul S. Dempsey, "Compliance and Enforcement in Environmental Law:
Oil Pollution of the Marine Environment by Ocean Vessels" (New Journal of International Law and
Business 6, 1984: 459-460).
Cruise ships are notorious oil polluters. Their crimes were uncovered this decade. In 1994, the U.S.
Coast Guard detected a huge oil slick trailing after the world's largest cruise ship. Royal Caribbean's
Sovereign of the Seas. A four-year investigation determined "a fieet-wide conspiracy within Royal
Environmental Crime and Pollution 81

Caribbean Cruises Ltd. to save millions of dollars by dumping oily wastes into the sea" (Ibid.). Even
after Royal Caribbean paid a nine million dollar fine in June 1998 and said it would never happen again,
it did happen one month later. Royal Caribbean's Nordic Empress dumped oily wastes and attempted
to hide the fact by creating false records. To defend itself. Royal Caribbean's lawyers boldly claimed,
"a private company doing business in the United States was immune from criminal prosecution
because its ships fly foreign fiags" (Douglas Franz, "Gaps in Sea Laws Shield Pollution by Cruise
Lines," New York Times, January 3, 1999: 1). Royal Caribbean's ships are registered in Liberia.
Helping Royal Caribbean make this case were former U.S. Attorneys General Benjamin R. Civiletti
and Elliot L. Richardson. Royal Caribbean also took on board William K. Reilly, a former head of the
Environmental Protection Agency. He was hired. Royal Caribbean said with a straight face, to help
implement a new environmental compliance program (Ibid.). Civiletti and Richardson should have
been chagrined when the Nordic Express discharge was discovered, as it followed their courtroom
performances in defense of Liberian registry (Ibid.).