Regulators are seeking public input about a proposed civil penalty against Fort Smith, Arkansas-based ABF Freight System Inc. for alleged Clean Water Act violations which spanned five years, according to a joint press release by the Maryland Attorney General and the Maryland Department of the Environment.
The freight trucking company faces a $530,000 penalty split among four states: the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and Maryland.
The proposed consent decree requires the company to comply with stormwater protection rules at its nine trucking terminals, which includes one near Bascom Creek in Elkridge between Highway 1 and Interstate 95.
The Elkridge permit dates back to 2014. During a state inspection in 2016, regulators found that the company left an uncovered disposal bin on the west side of the truck terminal, failed to label containers that could leak including maintenance shop barrels that regulators believe had petroleum products, left barrels of waste oil and antifreeze on the floor, failed to keep waste and garbage from being discharged into creek waters and similar issues.
By January 2020, state inspectors dinged the company for failing to stop waste and garbage from flowing into the creek, not keeping track of significant spills or leaks of oil or toxic hazardous pollutants, including documentation of an oil spill flagged by inspectors in 2016.
In July 2021, state regulators found the same issues persisted at the Elkridge site.
The company must implement a “comprehensive stormwater compliance program” across all its trucking terminals among other requirements, according to the consent decree.
"When we recognized an issue back in 2014, we voluntarily reached out to agencies and began working to correct the problem,” a spokesperson for ArcBest, the parent company of ABF Freight, told the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Tuesday.
Pollutants found in stormwater can adversely affect water quality, harm animals and plants, decrease biological diversity, increase erosion and chances of flooding, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment.
“In the communities adjacent to industrial facilities, even a small amount of stormwater runoff can be dangerous for public health and the environment,” said Anthony Brown, Maryland Attorney General in a press release.
Environmental advocates who regularly monitor water quality in Baltimore’s harbor told WYPR that the facility does appear to sit near a creek that flows into the Patapsco River which eventually discharges in the Chesapeake Bay. The industrial site was not previously on the radar of the nonprofit organization, Bluewater Baltimore, which told WYPR it now expects to monitor the progress of the consent decree open for public comment for the next 30 days.
