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The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited a clay company for six willful and serious health violations. The federal labor officials said that Aapex Environmental Services, at 4682 Crossroads Park Drive exposed employees to asbestos during a botched cleanup project at the former Agway building in DeWitt. The company will be fined thousands of dollars once the charge has been proved.
OSHA is planning to fine the company $57,000. The owners of Aapex, William Hickok, Bob Leathley and John Leathley are to meet OSHA representatives April 20. They will discuss a possible settlement.
The investigation by OSHA inspectors had begun in mid-November. Their conclusion was that the company broke several laws while doing work at the former Agway building, near ShoppingTown Mall. According to the inspectors, Aapex failed to monitor its employees' exposure to asbestos, falsified records, failed to perform proper air-sampling tests, failed to train employees on how to properly contain and clean up asbestos. Apart from this, they allowed asbestos-contaminated water to leak from work areas.
Chris Adams, OSHA's Syracuse-area director said that Aapex chose to bypass employee health and safety by ignoring basic safeguards required by law.
Previously, Aapex had been fined by OSHA for health violations. This was in 2002 when OSHA issued four serious citations against the company. The owners admitted to improper practices during a job at Crucible Specialty Metals and paid $3,087 in fines.
In March, an Aapex supervisor in charge of the asbestos removal pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to violate the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Superfund law. Everett Blatche, 44, of Syracuse will be sentenced Aug. 21 in federal court. He is facing up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines.
The federal prosecutors said though nobody else had been charged connected to the cleanup, that could be changed.
The company officials declined to comment on the issue.
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