The Fountain Hills Town Prosecutor’s Office earlier this week it had filed a 10-count criminal complaint against Green Arrow Environmental Services, Inc. of Mesa; company owner, Peter Marquardt, and three employees, charging each with criminal damage to a public utility and criminal polluting.

The complaint alleges that on July 9, 2018 employees of Green Arrow pumped more than 5,000 gallons of raw industrial waste into the Fountain Hills Sanitary District’s municipal sewer system. The complaint charges that this action caused a disruption of several days to the system’s operation and more than $8,000 in clean-up costs.

Assistant District Engineer Christopher Kiriluk said the Sanitary District had been experiencing “upsets of the biological treatment system at the wastewater treatment plant” several times per year for at least two years. It was believed these “upsets” were caused by illegal dumping of industrial wastes into the district’s wastewater system.

“We want to send a strong message to septic haulers that they cannot come into this town and illegally dump their loads into the local sewer system,” District Manager Dana Trompke said. “We urge any resident to notify the Sanitary District if you observe any commercial or suspicious vehicles tampering with manholes. The effects of an illegal dumping into the sewer are damaging to the infrastructure and costly to the treatment processes.”

See more on this story in the Aug. 7 edition of The Times.