State v. Carey

920 P.2d 1, 186 Ariz. 121
CourtCourt of Appeals of Arizona
DecidedNovember 9, 1995
DocketNo. 2 CA-CR 94-0054
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 920 P.2d 1 (State v. Carey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Carey, 920 P.2d 1, 186 Ariz. 121 (Ark. Ct. App. 1995).

Opinion

OPINION

FERNANDEZ, Judge.

A jury convicted appellant Brendan A. Carey of six counts of unlawful transportation and disposal of a hazardous waste, in violation of AR.S. § 49-925(A)(l) and (3), and five related counts of fraudulent schemes and practices. The trial court suspended imposition of sentence, placed appellant on probation for a period of three years, and fined him $10,000.

On appeal, appellant argues that the invalidation of federal hazardous waste regulations invalidates the Arizona regulations which underlie his convictions, that the instructions defining hazardous waste were erroneous, and that the trial court erroneously excluded other acts evidence. We affirm.

FACTS

Appellant was the owner and operator of Hazchem Environmental Services, which brokered services involving the treatment, storage, and disposal of industrial wastes. In early 1988, the Cadtek Corporation began manufacturing printed circuit boards which it had formerly only designed. Cadtek hired Hazchem to dispose of the accumulated sludge that resulted from that manufacturing process.

Cadtek’s production line included electroplating, electroless plating, and chemical etching processes. The wastewater from the plating processes was collected and discharged into a storage tank. Wastewater from the filled storage tank was transferred to a treatment tank. The treated wastewa-ter was then drained through 50-mieron filter bags, and the solid waste that was captured, called sludge, was accumulated and stored in 55-gallon drums for disposal.

Concerned that the sludge might be a hazardous waste, a Cadtek employee contacted Hazchem to inquire about its disposal and spoke with appellant, telling him “who [he] represented, basically what [Cadtek] did, design PC boards and [that they were a] small electroplating operation.” On at least one occasion prior to June 1988, appellant toured the Cadtek site and was taken into the “wet floor” area where the plating operations were located. Evidence of the electroplating operation was plainly visible by virtue of the wiring into the tanks and the distinctive odor in the “wet floor” area.

In July 1988, prior to disposing of any waste, appellant had a sample of the sludge drawn for chemical analysis. He reported to Cadtek that the analysis showed that the sludge was nonhazardous and that he could dispose of it at the local landfill very economically. Appellant then wrote to the Pima County Solid Waste Division seeking permission to dispose of the sludge in the Tangerine landfill.

At that time, the Tangerine landfill did not have an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permit to accept hazardous waste. However, based on the representations in his letter, appellant was granted permission to dispose of the sludge. Similarly, in response to identical letters from Hazchem employees with attached chemical analyses, permission was granted to dispose of Cadtek sludge on two subsequent occasions. Hazchem disposed of eleven 55-gallon drums in September 1988, sixteen drums in February 1989, and thirteen drums in April 1989.

A solid waste is a hazardous waste if it is a listed, i.e., inherently hazardous, waste pursuant to 40 C.F.R. § 261 Subpart D (1995), incorporated by reference at Ariz.Admin.Code R18-8-26HA).1 See State ex rel. Corbin v. Ybarra, 161 Ariz. 188, 193 n. 3, 777 [123]*123P.2d 686, 691 n. 3 (1989). As of May 1980, the EPA had listed “[wjastewater treatment sludges from electroplating operations” as hazardous waste F006 under 40 C.F.R. § 261.31. In his tape-recorded statement, appellant admitted knowing that electroplating processes produced F-coded or listed waste and that he would recognize an electroplating operation if he saw it and was aware of the distinctive odor generated by that process.

VALIDITY OF ARIZONA’S HAZARDOUS WASTE MIXTURE RULE

Appellant contends that the holdings in Shell Oil Co. v. Environmental Protection Agency, 950 F.2d 741 (D.C.Cir.1991) and United States v. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 38 F.3d 862 (7th Cir.1994) establish that the sludge generated from Cadtek’s wastewater treatment is not hazardous. He reasons that, because those cases invalidated the mixture rule in effect at that time, 40 C.F.R. § 261.3(a)(2)(h),2 and because the Cadtek sludge originated from a mixture of wastewa-ter from listed and nonlisted processes, it was not hazardous waste. Therefore, he argues, the state faded to prove one of the elements of the offenses of which he was convicted.

While we agree that both Shell Oil Co. and Bethlehem Steel Corp. invalidated the mixture rule, they are distinguishable for two reasons. First, both eases were prosecutions under the federal statute. Second and more importantly, the courts invalidated the rule because of a procedural defect, not a substantive one. The courts in both eases found that the EPA had faded to provide adequate notice and opportunity for comment when it issued the final.waste management rules, which included the mixture rule provision. That provision had not been included in the proposed rules and because the mixture rule could not be regarded as a logical outgrowth of the proposed rules, the court in Shell Oil Co. found unpersuasive the government’s argument that interested parties had received “implicit notice” of the mixture rule from the publication of the proposed regulations. Id, 950 F.2d at 751-52.

Appellant argues that because Arizona adopted the federal rules, incorporating them by reference, see Ariz.Admin.Code R18-8-261(A), the invalidation of the federal rule likewise invalidated Arizona’s mixture rule. However, unlike the final EPA rules, the Arizona rules were submitted by DHS to the public for comment through publication on October 1, 1986, and public hearings were conducted in Yuma, Tucson, Phoenix, and Flagstaff. The mixture rule was part of those proposed regulations. Arizona Secretary of State Public Rule-Making Docket, Docket # R 86-0001, filed September 16, 1986.

A review of the adoption documents for the Arizona hazardous waste regulations reflects that the legislature chose to customize the federal regulations to our needs. R9-8-1860-1880. Because the legislature elected to promulgate rules equivalent to, and consistent with, the federal rules, but in lieu of them and because it followed Arizona’s rule-making requirements, A.R.S. §§ 41-1001 through 41-1057, we find no procedural defect in adopting them in Arizona’s mixture rule. Accordingly, the invalidation of the federal rule has no effect on the validity of the rule under which appellant was prosecuted.

Appellant also contends that the sludge Cadtek generated and Hazchem disposed of was a mixture of accumulated wastewaters from manufacturing processes which generated hazardous, as well as nonhazardous materials.

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Bluebook (online)
920 P.2d 1, 186 Ariz. 121, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-carey-arizctapp-1995.