Hotel pleads guilty to illegal dumping in HackensackPosted Monday, March 23

SECAUCUS AND BEYOND – The owner of a Secaucus hotel will pay a local environmental organization $75,000 under a plea agreement announced Monday.
R.D. Secaucus, which owns the Crowne Plaza at 2 Harmon Plaza, will pay the settlement after pleading guilty to dumping sewage into the Hackensack River. Under the plea agreement, the $75,000 will go to the Hackensack Riverkeeper, a Northern New Jersey environmental organization, to be used for its ongoing work in the New Jersey Meadowlands.
An anonymous source tipped off Hackensack Riverkeeper Bill Sheehan about the sewage dumping last year.
Sheehan passed the information to the state Attorney General’s Office, which referred the matter to its Environmental Crimes Section.
In June 2009, investigators with the Environmental Crimes Section raided the hotel and said they found evidence. The hotel was indicted in September.
“What the Crowne Plaza did was not an ‘accident’ or a ‘spill’ ,” Sheehan said in a statement Tuesday. “It was deliberate pollution of the Hackensack River. Such conduct simply cannot be tolerated. Environmental crimes are just that: crimes. We salute [Supervising Deputy Attorney General Edward R.] Bonanno, the Attorney General’s office, and Superior Court Judge Lourdes Santiago for reminding us of that fact.”
Under the plea agreement, the hotel must now set up a legal procedure to discard its sewage, and must monitor that procedure.