New London Manufacturing Company to Pay $1 Million for Violating the Clean Water Act

NEW LONDON, CT - Court officials announced Tuesday that Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, LLC (formerly known as Faria Limited, LLC) has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the government to resolve violations of the Clean Water Act.

As part of a deferred prosecution agreement, the company is required to commit no criminal conduct, comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, and pay $1 million, according to a release. Most ofthe money will support environmental conservation projects in coastal Connecticut.

Sheffield will make the payment in installments over a seven-year period. If the company fully complies with this agreement, the information will be dismissed.

Sheffield’s former president and chief executive officer, Thomas H. Faria, pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Clean Water Act on July 8, 2014. Under Faria’s leadership, Sheffield discharged polluted industrial wastewater from its New London factory into the municipal sewage system without the required permit and industrial wastewater treatment system. These instances occurred from at least April 2004 to May 2011.

Faria resigned from the company on March 7, 2014, as a condition of his guilty plea, and no longer has any role in its operations or management. On February 13, 2015, Faria was sentenced to three years of probation, a $30,000 fine and 300 hours of community service.

According to court documents and statements made in court, the Clean Water Act requires that every company obtain a permit from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection before it can discharge industrial wastewater to the public sewage system, commonly known as the publicly owned treatment works (“POTW”). Companies are also required, among other things, to test and monitor their industrial wastewater monthly to ensure that chemical levels in the wastewater do not exceed federal and state limitations.

Sheffield has a factory at on Broad Street in New London that manufactures a wide range of over-the-counter pharmaceutical creams, ointments and toothpastes. From approximately 1986 to July 2011, Sheffield discharged industrial wastewater from its New London manufacturing operations to the New London POTW without a permit and in violation of Connecticut’s approved pretreatment program.

The New London POTW discharges to the Thames River in southeastern Connecticut. During this entire period, Sheffield lacked a pretreatment system at its factory to treat its industrial wastewater prior to discharge, performed no regular monitoring of its discharges of industrial wastewater and submitted no monthly monitoring reports to the CT DEEP.

After becoming the company’s president and chief executive officer in April 2003, Faria learned through his own employees that Sheffield was discharging pollutants in its industrial wastewater without the required permit. Faria also learned that in order to obtain a permit from CT DEEP, the company would have to install, at significant expense, a wastewater pretreatment system that would pretreat its industrial wastewater prior to discharging it to the New London POTW.

Although Faria’s own employees urged him to make the financial investment to bring the company into compliance, he chose not to. Faria continued this illegal course even when four environmental consulting firms, which the company had hired, advised him that the discharge of industrial wastewater to the public sewage treatment system, without a pretreatment system and CT DEEP permit, is illegal.

On April 20, 2011, the CT DEEP conducted an unannounced inspection of Sheffield. After finding that the company had no wastewater discharge permits, the CT DEEP inspector issued a Notice of Violation and cited the company for discharging manufacturing and laboratory wastewater without a permit.

On or about May 27, 2011, Sheffield submitted a permit application to CT DEEP. In July 2011, the company installed a wastewater pretreatment system at its factory to pretreat the pollutants contained in its industrial wastewater prior to its discharge to the New London POTW.

The company since has remained compliant with the Clean Water Act, currently led by a new management team.

The company’s current chief executive officer, Jeffrey Davis, is a former Sheffield manager who personally urged Faria to bring the company into compliance with the Clean Water Act as early as 2005. The company has also established a formal procedure to protect whistleblowers who come forward.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Hal Chen and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Kenyon.

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