SAN FRANCISCO -- Water pollution can be a crime punishable by a year in jail if it's caused by simple negligence, or carelessness, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case from Alaska, sets a broad standard for prosecutions under the Clean Water Act in the nine Western states covered by the circuit.Most crimes involving unintentional acts -- an accidental shooting, for example, or vehicular manslaughter -- require proof of at least gross negligence, or a failure to use even slight care.
But the court said last week the Clean Water Act was a "public welfare" law, designed to protect people from the dangers of water pollution. Criminal prosecutions under such laws can be based on ordinary negligence, or a failure to use reasonable care, the same standard used in most civil suits for injuries.
"Civil negligence throws the criminal net pretty broad and brings in a lot of conduct that would otherwise warrant perhaps civil fines," said Jerry Juday, a lawyer for an Alaska railroad worker who faces a six-month jail sentence for an oil spill.
Edward Hanousek Jr., a roadmaster for Pacific & Arctic Railway and Navigation Co., was convicted of negligently discharging between 1,000 and 5,000 gallons of oil that spilled from a ruptured pipeline into the Skagway River in October 1994.
The court said Hanousek was in charge of a rock-quarrying project on an embankment 200 feet above the river, next to a high-pressure oil pipeline. A contractor had previously covered part of the pipeline with protective material, but no further sections were protected after Hanousek took over, the court said.
The pipe was punctured by a backhoe operator who was sweeping rocks from the tracks.
A jury acquitted Hanousek of conspiring to provide false information to investigating Coast Guard officers but convicted him of violating the Clean Water Act. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge James Fitzgerald to six months in jail, six months in a halfway house and a $5,000 fine. The maximum punishment for a first offense is a year in jail and a $25,000 fine.
In upholding his conviction, the court said Hanousek was held responsible for his own negligence, not the backhoe operator's. The court also cited prosecution evidence that Hanousek directed the employees' activities and knew of the dangers of operating heavy machinery near the pipeline.