A busy night at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Secaucus used to be bad news for the Hackensack River as it flowed into New York Harbor.
But efforts by hotel management to flush toilet waste directly into the river -- bypassing the sewer system -- will now cost the hotel dearly after its ownership agreed to plead guilty to a fourth degree crime of unlawfully discharging a pollutant in violation of the New Jersey Water Pollution Control Act.
"I would not have expected any other outcome," said Hackensack Riverkeeper Captain Bill Sheehan after uncovering the crime less than a year ago.
The company, RD Secaucus LP, is believed to be a Montreal-based limited partnership.
According to the Hackensack Riverkeeper, the hotel management would discharge the waste from a series of pits and tunnels on its property into the river, instead of making a costly fix to the plumbing to send the malodorous material into the Secaucus sewer system as required by law.
An anonymous tipster reached out to the Riverkeeper, he investigated, and then turned over his discovery to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Division of Criminal Justice Environmental Crimes Section.
Investigators found that "putrid waste water from an underground tunnel was collecting in a grate-covered pit beside the hotel," according to a news release from the New Jersey Attorney General's office.
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"Hotel staff rigged a pump in the pit and a hose, through which the foul-smelling waste water was pumped across a grassy area to the riverbank," the release detailed.
Less than a year later, the company pleaded guilty, and agreed to pay the Riverkeeper $75,000 to continue its river patrol efforts on behalf of the Hackensack, in addition to making the costly repairs the company avoided up til now.
A spokesman for the hotel said the ownership had changed at least 10 years ago and this was old waste pre-dating that change.
"There was no evidence to indicate that a sanitary line leak ever occurred under the hotel under our present ownership and management," said the spokesman in a prepared statement. "After nine months of extensive engineering studies, monitoring, and installation of new automatic pumping equipment, we today resolved allegations first brought to our attention by state environmental authorities back in 2009.”
Nonetheless, environmentalists say they will be watching.
"We're gonna keep an eye on the folks at the Crowne Plaza as well as any other polluters," Captain Bill said.
