Convicted Of Endangering The Public Health And Environment, St. James Hauler Sentenced
Suffolk County, NY - April 28, 2017 - Convicted trucking company owner Thomas Datre Jr., convicted last year of endangering the public health, safety and the environment in the third degree and four charges of operating a solid waste management facility without a permit was sentenced to one year in the Suffolk County jail and his company, 5 Brothers Farming Corporation, also convicted of the endangering charge, was fined $600,000 at today’s sentencing in State Supreme Court, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.
Datre Jr., 43, of St. James, oversaw the dumping of toxic construction rubble in four locations western Suffolk, including an estimated 40-thousand tons of toxic debris on a soccer field and other areas in a Brentwood public park that remains closed to the community three years after witnesses reported seeing Datre trucks dump piles of dirt containing brick, cement, clay, glass and chunks of metal inside the facility.
District Attorney Spota said the tons of contaminated fill have been removed from Clemente Town Park at a cost of nearly four million dollars to Islip Town taxpayers and work remains to be done to make it a safe recreational facility.
“In June of 2013 a Brentwood church asked defendant Christopher Grabe to help restore their soccer fields in the park, and that was the beginning,” DA Spota said. “The defendants exploited this opportunity, disguised it as “doing a good deed”, and brazenly dumped tens of thousands of tons of toxic rubble in Clemente Park for weeks.” The Town of Islip closed the park on April 23, 2014.
“While the mastermind of these horrific acts and one of his accomplices was sentenced today, the ramifications of their crimes will be felt for years. What happened in this case is a stark portrait of greed and corruption that resulted in hazardous and “acutely hazardous” chemicals, metals, pesticides and petroleum products dumped in our neighborhoods and potentially into our sole source aquifer where we all get our water,” District Attorney Spota said. “The dumping allowed Datre Jr. to avoid paying fees of up to $1,500 per truckload of construction debris. He pocketed the profits and we are left with the environmental consequences and the potential effects to human health which won’t be fully realized for years.”
Datre Jr.’s codefendant and dispatcher Christopher Grabe, 39, pleaded guilty to two felonies for his role in facilitating the scheme to dump the materials on a soccer field and recharge basin in the Brentwood Park and the Central Islip site. Grabe was sentenced Thursday to serve one month in the county jail, five months of community service, and five years of probation.
A third man, Ronald Cianciulli, 50, of Brightwaters, the owner of Atlas Asphalt in Deer Park, was convicted after a six-day bench trial of three charges of endangering the public health, safety and the environment and one count of operating a solid-waste management facility without a permit, District Attorney Spota said. Cianciulli assisted Datre Jr. in the 2014 dumping of toxic debris on the Deer Park wetlands parcel near his asphalt business. Cianciulli will be sentenced June 1.