Wayland Company Fined In Boston Deaths Faces New $624K Penalty

WAYLAND, MA — A Wayland-based company penalized after two deaths last winter at a Boston construction site was fined again this week, this time for violations at an East Boston construction site, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is ordering Wayland-based Atlantic Coast Utilities and Sterling Excavation to pay about $624,000 in new fines. The agency said inspectors found workers were exposed to cave-in risks at a job site at 18 Crestway Road.

In February 2021, Jordy Alexander Castaneda Romero, 27, and Juan Carlos Figueroa Gutierrez, 33, died when they were knocked by a construction into a nine-foot-deep trench along High Street in Boston. In August, OSHA ordered Atlantic Coast Utilities to pay $1.2 million in fines over that incident.

In a separate case, Atlantic Coast owner Laurence M. Moloney was indicted by a grand jury in late 2021 for falsifying workplace safety documents, according to the Boston Globe. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.

According to OSHA, Moloney has been fined through various construction companies for some 14 previous violations over a 20-year period. He was fined over $81,000 in those incidents, but about $73,500 remains unpaid, OSHA said in a news release.

"While Laurence Moloney may reincorporate and operate under a variety of names, what is consistent is his pattern of willfully violating safety and health requirements, ignoring OSHA citations and penalties and persistently placing employees in harm’s way," Boston OSHA Administrator Galen Blantonin said in a news release this week.