By The Huffington Post News Editors

By Neale Gulley
BUFFALO, N.Y., March 27 (Reuters) – Jury deliberations were set to begin on Thursday in the federal trial of Tonawanda Coke Corp, which has been charged with fouling the air for years, and whose environmental manager is accused of hiding plant deficiencies from U.S. regulators.
Chief U.S. District Judge William Skretny issued instructions to the jury for several hours on Wednesday and told the panel to begin deliberations on Thursday morning.
The western New York company faces a 19-count indictment that lists numerous violations of the federal Clean Air Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and obstruction of justice for an alleged cover up of emissions prior to a 2009 investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency. If found guilty, the company faces fines for each count.
The company, which has operated for 30 years in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, produces a coal-based additive called coke that is used to make steel.
Prosecutors said the company’s air permit application did not mention a pressure relief valve emitting noxious coke oven gas. Other violations of federal law, they said, include the failure to install required emission control devices called baffles.
“Time and again, the defendants chose to deceive, not comply, all in an attempt to put profit above all else,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Mango said in closing arguments on Tuesday.
“Money drove this business into deception,” he added.
The cost of installing baffles was estimated at $125,000, prosecutors said. However, defense attorneys said that sum would not have made compliance cost-prohibitive had the plant been aware that baffles were an issue.
“This is not a substantial cost that reasonably and rationally would drive criminal acts,” defense attorney Gregory Linsin said during his closing argument.
Instead, Linsin took aim at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which he said had granted the plant an exception to the baffles in one area of the plant. While the agency …read more
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