The Department of Justice’s Environmental Crimes unit said Walmart has been slapped with $110 million in pollution fines — the second largest criminal environmental fee imposed in American history.
The largest was assessed on BP for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, to the tune of $4 billion, The Washington Examiner reported.
Walmart was handed the fine after pleading guilty to a range of charges related to improper pesticide dumping, the Examiner said. The Arkansas-based company will have to pay $81.6 million to cases that were brought by the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, the Examiner reported. The remaining millions of dollars will be paid to Missouri and California for court cases thatstemmed from those states.
Justice Department officials said Walmart didn’t properly train employees on the proper disposal of chemicals.
“As a result,” the Justice Department said, in a statement reported by the Examiner, “hazardous wastes were either discarded improperly at the store level — including being put into municipal trash bins, or if a liquid, poured into the local sewer system — or they were improperly transported without proper safety documentation to one of
six product return centers located throughout the United States.”
Walmart has more than 4,000 stores in the United States, and is one of the largest seller of pesticides.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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