Take the time to make sure your contractors are following good housekeeping practices or you may be saddled with a large fine. That's what happened to the Authority of the Port of Americas (APA), which was fined $308,000 for improper disposal of dredged materials on a project it had contracted out.

APA is a public corporation and government instrumentality of Puerto Rico, whose main goal is to develop a deep draft port of international caliber in the southern region of Puerto Rico.

EPA claims that on a number of occasions in spring and summer 2006 an APA contractor dumped material dredged to create the port in areas other than those designated for ocean disposal in its federal permit. The sediment from the project was to be placed into a disposal site known as the Ponce Harbor disposal site, an approximately 1 square nautical mile area located in deep water about 4.5 nautical miles south of the entrance to Ponce Harbor.

Here's what happened by the same contractor on three different occasions:

• 4,000 cubic yards of dredged material was mistakenly discharged from a barge while it was being serviced because of a lack of communication and coordination between the two captains and the watch engineer.
• A 3,500-cubic-yard barge load of dredged material was released outside the Ponce Harbor disposal site because the barge doors delayed in opening and a lack of attention on the part of the captain allowed the load to be discharged after the barge had moved out of the designated site.
• The captain prematurely turned off the system used to monitor materials being discharged from the vessel and dropped 4,000 cubic yards of dredged material when the vessel was no longer in the Ponce Harbor disposal site.

In addition, EPA determined that on various occasions, dredged material was lost from barges while under way and en route to the Ponce Harbor site.

INFO: Contact EPA's Elias Rodriguez at 212-637-3664.