Pays Avalon $100,000 for cleanup costs

Pennsylvania dentist Thomas W. McFarland Jr. was sentenced Friday for dumping the needles and other medical-type waste that washed up in Avalon, Capre May County, during the last week of August 2008, causing the borough to close its beaches five times.

McFarland, 61, of Wynnewood, Pa., was sentenced to four years of probation by state Superior Court Judge Raymond A. Batten in Cape May Courthouse.

McFarland paid $100,000 to the Borough of Avalon Friday by cashier’s check as restitution and as a contribution for environmental programs and projects, at the discretion of the town.

McFarland pleaded guilty on March 15 to fourth-degree unlawful discharge of water pollutants, an amended count of a state grand jury indictment obtained by the Division of Criminal Justice on Nov. 18, 2008.

McFarland, who owns a house in the Avalon Manor section of Middle Township, admitted that he took his small motor boat into Townsend Inlet at the north end of Avalon on Aug. 22, 2008, and dumped a bag of waste from his dental practice in Wynnewood.

Beginning the next day, dental waste was found washed up along a stretch of beach at the north end of Avalon. The waste included approximately 260 “Accuject” dental-type needles, 180 cotton swabs, a number of blue and white plastic capsules used to hold dental filling material, and other items.

Officials in Avalon alerted the state Department of Environmental Protection, which notified the Division of Criminal Justice. The division’s Environmental Crimes unit immediately began an investigation with the Avalon police and the county prosecutor’s office.

Investigators traced the source of the dental waste, and the Attorney General’s office offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. Certain information obtained in the first days of the investigation pointed to McFarland’s practice.

Avalon officials recovered a wrapped dental drill bit bearing a lot number. Detectives contacted the manufacturer and learned McFarland’s practice was one of a small number of practices in the Mid-Atlantic states that bought drill bits from the lot in question.

Detectives also determined that he received promotional products from Accuject at a time when they were distributing needles bearing the lot numbers that washed up in Avalon.

On Sept. 2, 2008, McFarland went to the Avalon police and admitted dumping the dental waste. After searching his beach house, Boston Whaler boat and SUV in New Jersey, investigators obtained a search warrant for his dental office in Pennsylvania and executed it on Sept. 4. They discovered evidence corroborating McFarland’s statement that the waste came from his practice. McFarland was charged by complaint warrant at that time and released without bail. The state of Pennsylvania subsequently suspended his dental license.

The Attorney General’s office said that there had not been a similar case of a person being charged with dumping medical waste directly into the ocean in 20 years.

Supervising Deputy Attorney General Ed Bonanno, head of the Environmental Crimes Section, prosecuted the case.

Assemblymen Nelson T. Albano and Matthew W. Milam (both D-Cape May) decried as too lenient the probation sentence given McFarland.

“While it was good to hear that Dr. McFarland was found guilty of his actions, his punishment is much too lenient for the havoc he caused,” Albano said. “Polluters who foul our beaches must pay dearly for tarnishing the shore’s reputation – something today’s sentence does not adequately enforce.”

Milam said, “Dr. McFarland’s actions had severe economic repercussions on the region — repercussions that his light sentence does not take into account. just one person’s reckless behavior can have a drastic negative impact on our beach towns and small businesses, something that the new beach dumping fine structure is meant to express. It’s my hope that in the future, the courts see fit to put polluters on the hook, not just for environmental damages, but economic ones too.”

After learning of the incident, Albano and Milam (both D-Atlantic/Cape May/Cumberland) sponsored legislation (A-3271), enacted earlier this year, doubling the fines for illegal medical-waste dumping in New Jersey waters to $100,000 a day.

Blogged from T. HESTER SR., NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM