[ADEQ Media] ADEQ Director Owens Announces Kiewit Western to Pay $80, 000 for Water Violations in Gila & Greenlee counties

[media@lists.azdeq.gov]

ADEQ Director Owens Announces Kiewit Western to Pay $80,000 for Water
Violations in Gila & Greenlee counties

PHOENIX (June 18, 2008) -- Arizona Department of Environmental Quality
Director Steve Owens announced today that Kiewit Western Company will
pay $80,000 in civil penalties for water quality violations at
construction sites on Highway 260 and Highway 191 in Gila and Greenlee
counties.  

In 2002, while involved in construction along Highway 260, the company
built a drainage ditch and bulldozed a total of more than 100,000
gallons of silt-laden stormwater into forest streams in Gila County.
During 2002-2003, the silt drained into several waterways that flow into
Christopher Creek and, later, Roosevelt Lake, with each discharge
lasting from at least one day to two weeks or longer. 

"Kiewit's carelessness contaminated some of Arizona's most precious
water resources," Director Owens said. "We will not tolerate this kind
of pollution."  

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has designated sections in Tonto
Creek, 12 miles downstream of Christopher Creek, as critical habitat for
the spiked dace and loach minnow, both protected fishes under the
federal Endangered Species Act. The discharged silt caused by Kiewit's
construction activity on Highway 260 changed the color of the surface
water, settled on the creek bottom and formed bottom deposits.  The
pollution created risks to aquatic life and recreational uses in the
creek.  

In addition, at its Highway 191 bridge construction site east of Safford
in 2003, Kiewit stockpiled rock and other materials that discharged into
a dry wash flowing to the Gila River watershed. ADEQ notified the
company repeatedly that its erosion and sediment control structures were
inadequate in light of anticipated monsoons in 2003.  

In addition to violating the state's surface water quality protection
laws, Kiewit also failed to comply with the state's permitting
requirements regulating discharges into state water bodies. 

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News media interested in additional information on this or any other
topic concerning the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality should
contact the Office of Communications at (602) 771-2215 or via email at
communications@azdeq.gov.

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