RUTLAND — A Rutland businessman has been ordered to pay nearly $1.8 million to the state for an “emergency” cleanup three years ago. The property was contaminated by dry cleaning chemicals.
The total cost of environmental mitigation, however, will be higher. John Ruggiero must pay for ongoing monitoring of $15,000 annually for years to come.
Collecting that money from Ruggiero will be another matter.
“It’s kind of moot,” Ruggiero told Judge Samuel Hoar Jr. at one point during a hearing Monday in Rutland Superior Court when talk turned to how much money the developer will have to pay the state. “I have no ability to pay it.”
Ruggiero, who owns and manages about 20 properties in the city under a number of corporate names, told the judge he will have to sell the Woodstock Avenue site in order to pay what he owes the state.
He said he is likely to appeal the ruling to the Vermont Supreme Court.
Assistant Attorney General Justin Kolber, who prosecuted the case for the state, said he will pursue all available options to the collect the money.
“That will be a whole other proceeding,” Kolber added.
The money collected from Ruggiero would go into the state Environmental Contingency Fund.
The judge awarded the state $535,679, and then tripled the award because Ruggiero failed to comply with a previous court order to clean up the site. That resulted in total damages of $1,607,037.
In a previous court order granting summary judgement in favor of the state, Judge Mary Miles Teachout ruled that Ruggiero was “personally” responsible for the damages.
This spring the state reached an undisclosed settlement with Ruggiero over the cleanup, but the Rutland businessman declined to follow through on the terms of the deal. That agreement involved paying for the cost of the cleanup, and did not include triple damages, Kolber said Monday.
In addition to the damages, Hoar, the judge at Monday’s hearing, awarded the state $180,443 in prejudgement interest, increasing Ruggiero’s total bill to the state to $1,787,480.
Hoar then turned to the matter of ongoing monitoring of the site to ensure no further environmental hazard.
The judge asked Ruggiero and Kolber for suggestions on how best to work that out, but the Rutland business said he was no position to make any agreements that he couldn’t keep only to have the state later say he didn’t follow through on the deal.
“I’m tired of it,” Ruggiero told the judge.
The judge, based on a suggestion from Kolber, then ordered Ruggiero to pay the next five years of monitoring up front, or $75,000. The money would be held in escrow.
If the state determines that the annual monitoring needs to continue past the five-year period, the judge added, Ruggiero will have to pay up $15,000 a year, plus any adjustments for inflation, for the next 28 years.
The judge’s award of damages Monday was the latest turn in a case against Ruggiero that has been working its way through state environmental and civil court for years.
In an unusual step, the state cleaned up the private property in 2014 when Ruggiero failed to do it himself.
State officials wanted to stop migration of a plume of tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, a dry cleaning solvent and known human carcinogen, toward a nearby residential neighborhood. The chemical posed both a risk to both groundwater and air quality, state officials said.
The cleanup was completed before the contamination could spread, according to state officials.
Filippo Dry Cleaners was in operation at the site from the 1970s to 2001. Ruggiero had purchased the property at a tax sale in 2004 for $10, hoping to use the commercial property for a retail operation.
State officials believe the contamination of the site was caused by the dry cleaning business.
Ruggiero has said he didn’t have the resources to pay for the cleanup. A former lawyer, Ruggiero was sent to jail in 2006 for mail fraud, and many of his properties in the city are delinquent on taxes.
In 2010, the property was considered for the brownfields program. An engineering report from that year showed the PCE could be cleaned up for $161,000.
Ruggiero, during the hearing Monday, pointed to that and other cost estimates to clean up the site that were far below what the state eventually paid.
Essentially, Ruggiero told the judge, the state could have paid for a Honda, but instead, “They built a Bentley.”
He added, “The agency can’t just have a blank check without a review.”
“We’re having that review right now,” the judge replied.
Matthew Becker, an environmental analyst in Waste Management and Prevention Division of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, testified that early cost projections for the cleanup did not account for removal and disposal of toxic water from the property.
The judge said he found the costs paid by the state for the work to clean up the site both “reasonable and necessary.”
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