Belleville chemist sentenced for abandoning lab full of hazardous materials
A Belleville man was given five years of probation after pleading guilty to abandoning a lab filled with hazardous materials in St. Clair County.
Lawrence D. Rutledge, 57, was sentenced on Wednesday, court records show. According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois Steven D. Weinhoeft, Rutledge pleaded guilty in July.
According to the release, some of the chemicals left behind were caustic or “highly explosive.” Others stored near each other could have produced toxic gases if they interacted.
Rutledge’s public defender, Todd M. Schultz, was not immediately available for comment.
According to the federal indictment, it was in 1997 that Rutledge started a business called Advanced Asymmetrics, Inc., which synthesized specialty chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry. The business was located inside a commercial building at 109 South Kossuth St. in Millstadt. According to the release, the building is close to a residential area and a senior living home.
Over time, the release stated, Rutledge accumulated numerous containers of chemicals and chemical waste at the Millstadt facility. Sometime around 2011, however, he stopped paying the county property taxes on the facility over the next few years, services including electrical, water supply and sewer were cut off.
In August 2015, employees of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Environmental entered the facility and found hundreds of containers with labels indicating the presence of acids among other chemicals, along with hazardous waste. Some of the metal containers had rusted and there was crystallization on metal surfaces, the complaint stated.
More than one metal container had fallen over and broken open, it said.
Sodium cyanide, which is extremely toxic, was stored within one inch of a container storing with acid, the release stated. If the chemicals interacted, cyanide gas could be formed.
According to the release, investigators also discovered a container labeled as a shock-sensitive picric acid, which is highly explosive.
A federal grand jury indicted Rutledge on the charge of storing hazardous waste without a permit in April 2018.
Rutledge must also pay $335,934.97 to the U.S. EPA for clean-up expenses associated with the illegal storage.
An earlier version of this story said that Rutledge had been sentenced to five years in prison.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 3:26 PM.
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