Real estate developer Michael J. Pinski, 41, of Kankakee, and two associates, have been indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the central district of Illinois for illegally dumping asbestos in an open field in Hopkins Park, Illinois. All are from Illinois.
As the U.S. Attorney’s Office notes, an indictment is an accusation, not a presumption of guilt, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
Pinski and his associates, Duane L. O’Malley, 57, of Bourbonnais, and James A. Mikrut, 47, of Manteno, are each charged with five felony counts of violating the Clean Air Act for their alleged actions in illegally removing and disposing of asbestos from a building owned by Pinski’s company, Dearborn Management, Inc.
In all, 127 plastic trash bags of the toxic substance were removed from a five-story Kankakee building in 2009, after Pinski hired O’Malley and his company, Origin Fire Protection, for the remediation work.
The problem is that neither O’Malley nor any employees in his company, or hired by his company, had been trained for, or certified in, asbestos removal work – a process strictly regulated by federal, state and local agencies from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, down to regional and local health departments.
Subsequent to Pinski hiring O’Malley to remove the asbestos – at a cost reportedly far below what a licensed asbestos remediation firm would have charged – O’Malley arranged for Mikrut to hire five workingmen to remove the asbestos from pipes inside the building, in a project that lasted from August 15 to August 20. Then, Mikrut and another individual dumped the bags in the Hopkins Park location.
According to the indictment – which was returned earlier in June but suppressed until O’Malley could be arrested and brought before the court – the three are charged with violations of the Clean Air Act, specifically failure to post the mandatory 10-day notice before beginning asbestos remediation; failure to employ, and have present during removal, an individual trained and certified in asbestos handling; failure to wet the asbestos adequately during removal; failure to properly label the vehicles used to transport the asbestos; and failure to deposit the bags of removed asbestos in a designated hazardous waste landfill.
Pinski and Mikrut have also been charged with one count each of lying to investigators in September of 2009 when asked about their role in the asbestos removal. Each violation can result in a maximum five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
The dumping of the 127 bags, reportedly on August 23, resulted in asbestos contamination in the soil. It could also – had unwary individuals found and examined the contents of the bags, led to asbestos-related diseases, specifically lung and digestive system cancers and peritoneal mesothelioma – a form of cancer of mesothelial tissues that lies dormant for up to five decades before exploding into rapidly invasive and incurable tumors.
O’Malley was detained and appeared in federal court in Urbana on June 11, then released on bond with a trial date of August 16. Pinski and Mikrut will be arraigned on July 15.
Sources: Huffington Post, U.S. Dept of Justice
