MONTICELLO, IOWA – The former owner of a defunct printed circuit board fabrication company has been sentenced to five years probation and fined more than $273,000 for wrongly discharging hazardous waste into a local waterway.

Gene Riddle, now 75, had closed the eponymously named Riddle Inc. in 1991, but left several barrels of hazardous chemicals in a deteriorating building not far from a flood-prone river called Kitty Creek. The river subsequently flooded three times, breaching the storage facility and the waste chemicals, which included raw copper sulfate, copper with ferric sulfate, sulfuric acid with alcohol, nitric acid, sodium hydroxide, tin lead, cyanide and formaldehyde, flowed into the river.

In addition to probation and the fines, Riddle, who pleaded guilty in November to violating the Clean Water Act, was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.

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