Wal-Mart agrees to clean up its act

By MATT WUNSCHE
Collegian Staff Writer

The impact of the neighborhood "superstore" has long been suspect, and a recent environmental inspection has confirmed those concerns at one construction site.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Wal-Mart recently signed an agreement by which the company will pay a civil penalty and reform its environmentally unsound construction practices in the commonwealth.

According to the agreement, Wal-Mart will pay a fine of $100,000 for past violations, $75,000 of which will go to environmental projects in northeast Pennsylvania, DEP Northeast regional director William F. McDonnell said in a press release.

The fines stem from construction violations occurring last year at the site of a store in Honesdale Borough in Wayne County, said Wal-Mart spokesperson Melissa Brown.

The Wayne County Conservation District completed an inspection of the construction site in January 1998 and found violations including uncontrolled water run-off, which caused erosion. The conservation district tried unsuccessfully to bring the construction to compliance and passed the problem on to the DEP.

Wal-Mart received three separate stop-work orders from the DEP but chose to ignore them, said DEP community relations coordinator Mark Carmon.

Because of the outstanding violations, the DEP issued a hold on new permits for Wal-Mart, which restricted any new Wal-Mart construction in the state.

Though Wal-Mart acknowledged the violations, the company cited other factors as causing the environmental problems. Excessive precipitation and oversight by sub-contractors caused water run-off and erosion, Brown said.

Earlier this month, Wal-Mart and the DEP agreed the chain could resume construction activities in the commonwealth. For Wal-Mart, the settlement cost the company and its chain stores, two of which are located in the State College area, only a small fraction of their total profits.

Attorneys for the DEP are considering taking action against the local contractors hired by Wal-Mart, though plans are not yet formal, DEP press secretary Christina Novak said.

To correct such problems in the future, Wal-Mart plans to work more closely with both the DEP and its own sub-contractors, she said.

"We will have more licensed engineers visiting the sites more often," Brown said. "It's been a learning experience. We will do everything we can for the communities."

The DEP will get $25,000 of the fine money, Novak said. The department then will decide how best to divide the funds among its general programs, she said.

Carmon said the remaining $75,000 will go to many different projects in the Northeast region, such as the Environmental Advisory Council and environmental organizations in the neighboring Luzerne and Lackawanna counties.