YOUNGSTOWN — Federal attorneys argued Youngstown must pay a $739,500 penalty to the United States for “years of noncompliance” on a major wastewater improvement project.

In a Thursday federal court filing, Pedro Segura, trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Section, and Elizabeth Berry, an assistant U.S. attorney, wrote: “Stipulated penalties are a vital tool to incentivize continuing compliance with consent decrees with lengthy compliance schedules, like this one. And the city’s retrospective ‘no harm, no foul’ justifications are not an excuse to avoid engaging with the (Environmental Protection Agency) and Ohio EPA on modifying their project schedules.”

They added: “The stipulated penalties requested here constitute good public policy. Ordering the city to pay the accrued stipulated penalties will deter future violations of the consent decree’s ongoing work scheduled to reduce sewage overflows.”

The city and federal government, along with the state of Ohio, “successfully finalized a proposed resolution,” according to a June 20 joint court filing to the ongoing dispute that permits the city to reduce a phase of the wastewater improvement project as part of a consent decree it signed in 2014.

The federal government wants the court to wait until Aug. 26 to make the resolution official in order to “provide sufficient time for the United States to consider any public comment on the proposed consent decree amendment and advise the court and other parties as to the United States’ final position.”

The federal government wanted the city to build a 100-million-gallon-per-day wet weather facility as part of the consent decree. That structure would treat excess combined sewage during heavy rainstorms and then release the water.

The city argued the structure was too large and expensive. It suggested an 80-million-gallon-per-day facility.

The federal government agreed June 6 to the city’s request for a smaller facility because Youngstown is diverting 35.5 million gallons of combined sewage annually from the Mahoning River in an ongoing project, costing $10.5 million, as well as an earlier deadline on the wet weather facility and a compressed schedule on an interceptor sewer project to keep wastewater from 13 lines from flowing into Mill Creek Park’s Lake Glacier and Lake Cohasset.

Judge Christopher A. Boyko of the U.S. District Court’s Northern District of Ohio, who is overseeing the case, is expected to officially sign off on the settlement regarding the project.

But the two sides are at odds over the $739,500 penalty the federal government wants Youngstown to pay for stalling the work.

Segura first brought up the penalty in a Sept. 29, 2023, letter to the city. Segura wrote that the city should pay $1,479,000 — with half going to the federal EPA and the other half to Ohio’s EPA — because the city “defaulted” on following through with federally mandated wastewater treatment plant improvements on a timely basis.

The state EPA declined to seek the penalty and has largely sided with Youngstown during the court proceedings.

Attorney Terrence S. Finn, hired by the city in this federal case, wrote in a July 24 motion opposing the penalty that the federal government ignored “the undisputed fact that the delay in completing the WWTP (wastewater treatment plant) improvements was caused by factors that were beyond Youngstown’s control and that there was a legitimate reason for the delayed compliance with the design deadlines for the Mill Creek Park sewer project.”

Finn added: “More importantly, the delays did not result in any harm to the environment. In fact, for each project, Youngstown implemented mitigating measures that resulted — and will continue to result — in significantly less pollution than would have occurred had Youngstown complied with the deadlines and requirements of the consent decree that are subject to the United States’ pending motion. In essence, the United States is asking this court to impose penalties against Youngstown for conduct that has resulted in the reduction of millions of gallons of pollution.”

Segura and Kelly wrote Thursday: “Youngstown makes no challenge to the stipulated penalties provision as written. Nor does Youngstown cite any requirement that, absent such a facial challenge to the underlying provisions, the request itself must overcome hurdles for reasonability and public policy. There is, thus, no basis for the court to inject a new reasonability analysis into a straightforward stipulated penalties claim.”

They wrote that the state’s decision to not seek penalties “has no bearing on whether to grant the United States’ request.”

The federal attorneys wrote that when Youngstown was “at least three years behind schedule and knowing that stipulated penalties were accruing,” it waited until September 2021 to request changes to the projects and schedules, including a two-year suspension on the Mill Creek Park project.

They wrote: “The uncontested record shows that the city of Youngstown unilaterally stopped working on broad swaths of the required (long-term control plan) projects for years before approaching the EPA to request delays to the projects. Excusing the city from stipulated penalties for these delays risks inviting similar future violations, which place the integrity of the consent decree at risk.”