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TRENTON – Attorney General Anne Milgram and Criminal Justice Director Deborah Gramiccioni announced that a Southampton contractor was sentenced today for falsifying documents to indicate that truckloads of contaminated soil from a state bridge project in Trenton were taken to an approved landfill, when he actually dumped them at a Burlington County farm.
According to Gramiccioni, James E. Haas Jr., 65, of Southampton, was sentenced to three years in state prison by Superior Court Judge Mitchel E. Ostrer in Mercer County. Haas pleaded guilty on May 28 to a charge of contract fraud. He had been named in a state grand jury indictment obtained on Aug. 14, 2007 by the Division of Criminal Justice Environmental Crimes Bureau.
Supervising Deputy Attorney General Edward R. Bonanno prosecuted the case for the Environmental Crimes Bureau. It was investigated by Lt. Jeffrey Gross and Detective Steven Ogulin of the Environmental Crimes Bureau, with assistance from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Burlington County Health Department.
“This contractor engaged in one deception after another to evade the requirements of the Department of Transportation contract, which were intended to ensure that this contaminated soil was disposed of properly,” said Attorney General Milgram. “We will continue to work aggressively to investigate and prosecute environmental crimes in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Protection and other agencies throughout New Jersey.”
"This is appropriate punishment for this contractor, who schemed to deceive the public and public agencies to the detriment of New Jersey's environment," DEP Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson said. "Environmental crimes like these undermine the protection we all demand and for which we fight so hard."
Haas was hired as a subcontractor for the state Department of Transportation’s Southard Street Bridge project in Trenton to dispose of a large quantity of contaminated soil that was stockpiled at the project site. The subcontract required that the soil be disposed of as non-hazardous industrial dry waste at a DEP-approved facility. While the soil was suitable for use as daily cover at the Burlington County Landfill, an approved disposal facility, the county had an adequate supply of cover and would not accept the soil from the Southard Street Bridge site.
The state investigation determined that from Aug. 7 to Aug. 10, 2006, Haas arranged for removal of more than 400 truckloads of contaminated soil from the Southard Street Bridge site. He arranged for the truckloads of soil to be dumped at a farm at 400 Hartford Road in Moorestown, which was not an approved disposal facility. The farm owner believed it was clean fill. To meet the contract requirements, Haas submitted bills of lading that indicated the soil went to the Burlington County Landfill. He also submitted fabricated weigh tickets for each truckload to support his claim that they went to the landfill.
DEP oversaw the removal of the soil from the farm in Moorestown to an approved landfill facility, where it was used for cover.
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