Initial Deseret News inquiries show that Laidlaw Environmental Services Inc. has a good environmental record. However, like any large, heavily regulated company, Laidlaw is not without its problems. Among them:
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 fined Laidlaw $68,250 for illegally opening the thermal-relief valves on five occasions at its incinerator in Spartanburg County, S.C. The EPA also clamped tighter controls on the incinerator, which was being regulated under a court order.- In 1993, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control fined Laidlaw $1.8 million for a number of technical violations that occurred from 1990 to 1992 at Laidlaw's hazardous-waste landfill near Pinewood, S.C.
- Laidlaw is currently in a legal struggle with South Carolina over whether the state can order the waste firm to come up with $30 million in cash to assure the eventual post-closure cleanup of the Pinewood landfill, which will contain 2,250 acre-feet of hazardous waste by the year 2000.
- The provincial government of Quebec, Canada, is negotiating with Laidlaw over the company's financial liability for the cleanup of hazardous-waste lagoons at an incinerator site Laidlaw owns near a town called Mercier. The lagoons were created by a previous owner and obtained later by Laidlaw, which argues that the government's attempts at remediation worsened the contamination and, therefore, the government should pay for the cleanup.