TCC Materials paid a tiny $10K for serious hazardous waste violations

TCC Materials ran a hazardous waste operation in a Kansas City, Kansas neighborhood with unlabeled containers, no emergency plans, and open waste storage — and when federal regulators finally caught up with them, the company walked away paying $10,000 ($10,000: less than the average American pays in federal income taxes in a single year).

Eight Violations. One Inspection. One Slap on the Wrist.

On March 25, 2025, EPA Region 7 inspectors walked through TCC Materials’ facility at 636 S. 66th Terrace in Kansas City, Kansas. What they found was a facility operating in near-total disregard of federal hazardous waste law. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) exists for one reason: to make sure companies that generate and store hazardous waste do so in a way that does not poison the people and land around them.

TCC Materials violated that law eight times over. The violations were wide-ranging, covering everything from how long the company stored hazardous waste, to whether containers were properly closed, to whether workers had access to emergency response plans if something went wrong. These are not obscure technicalities buried in regulatory fine print. These are the absolute floor-level requirements for anyone handling hazardous materials near a residential and industrial community.

The EPA filed its enforcement action under the expedited settlement process, meaning the agency decided this case was suitable for fast-track resolution without a full evidentiary hearing. The result: TCC Materials paid $10,000 ($10,000: the cost of about 3,333 gallons of unleaded gasoline at current prices) and certified that the violations were corrected.

Every Single Violation, Laid Out

• 40 C.F.R. § 262.34(a) — TCC Materials stored hazardous waste for longer than 90 days, the legal maximum for a large quantity generator operating without a storage permit.
• 40 C.F.R. § 262.34(a)(2) — The company failed to mark the accumulation start date on a hazardous waste storage container, making it impossible to track how long waste had been sitting there.
• 40 C.F.R. § 262.34(a)(3) — A hazardous waste container was not labeled with the words “Hazardous Waste” — a basic requirement designed to prevent accidental exposure.
• 40 C.F.R. § 265.15(d) — TCC Materials failed to document two weeks of required weekly hazardous waste inspections, leaving no paper trail that anyone was even checking on the waste.
• 40 C.F.R. § 265.53(a) — The facility did not maintain a copy of its emergency contingency plan on-site, meaning workers responding to a spill or chemical emergency would have had no guidance.
• 40 C.F.R. § 265.54 — TCC Materials failed to update its contingency plan to reflect changes at the facility, meaning the emergency response document was outdated and potentially useless.
• 40 C.F.R. § 265.173(a) — The company failed to keep a hazardous waste container closed except when adding or removing waste, allowing vapors or materials to escape into the surrounding environment.
• 40 C.F.R. § 279.22(c) — TCC Materials failed to clearly label totes of used oil with the words “Used Oil,” a requirement that helps prevent used oil from being mishandled, dumped, or mixed with other substances.

What $10,000 Does Not Cover

TCC Materials’ facility sits at 636 S. 66th Terrace, Kansas City, Kansas. That is a real address in a real neighborhood, not a remote industrial corridor miles from human life. The 66111 zip code sits in the Wyandotte County area of Kansas City — one of the most economically distressed counties in the state of Kansas, with poverty rates and environmental burden scores that consistently rank among the worst in the region. When companies in communities like this cut corners on hazardous waste management, it is the people nearby who absorb the consequences, not the shareholders.

Consider what it means to leave a hazardous waste container open. The law requires containers to stay closed except when actively adding or removing material. That rule exists because hazardous waste emits vapors, gases, and particulates that degrade air quality and can penetrate buildings, soil, and groundwater. Every hour TCC Materials left that container open, whatever was inside it had the opportunity to escape into the surrounding environment. The company does not say what was in the container. The settlement document does not name the specific substance. The community near that facility has no way of knowing what they were exposed to.

The missing emergency contingency plan is the detail that should make every worker and every neighbor’s stomach drop. Federal law requires facilities handling hazardous waste to keep emergency response plans on-site, updated to reflect current facility conditions, so that in the event of a spill, fire, or chemical release, workers and first responders know exactly what they are dealing with and how to contain it. TCC Materials did not have that plan on-site. They also failed to update it when conditions at the facility changed. If something had gone wrong during the period those plans were missing, the people on the ground would have been making critical decisions about a chemical emergency with no guidance whatsoever.

Then there are the unlabeled containers. Two separate violations cover labeling failures: one for not writing “Hazardous Waste” on a container, and one for not labeling used oil totes as “Used Oil.” These labels are the first and most fundamental line of defense for any worker who encounters those containers — a delivery driver, a maintenance worker, a temp employee on their first week. Without labels, a person has no way of knowing whether the container in front of them requires special handling, personal protective equipment, or emergency protocols. TCC Materials stripped away that basic protection from everyone who walked through or worked in that facility.

The missed inspection documentation deserves its own moment of scrutiny. The law requires large quantity hazardous waste generators to conduct weekly inspections and document them. TCC Materials failed to document two full weeks of inspections. That gap in the record means one of two things: either the inspections happened but were not recorded, leaving no accountability trail, or the inspections did not happen at all, meaning no one was regularly checking on the condition of the hazardous waste storage area. Both scenarios represent a failure of basic stewardship. Both scenarios leave workers and neighbors at greater risk.

Straight From the Document: The Quotes That Tell the Story

This Is Bigger Than One Facility

Environmental Degradation

The open hazardous waste container violation under 40 C.F.R. § 265.173(a) is among the most environmentally significant of the eight findings. Hazardous waste stored in open or improperly sealed containers releases vapors and particulates directly into the ambient air. Depending on the specific waste stream, this can introduce volatile organic compounds (VOCs), heavy metals, or other toxic substances into the local atmosphere. The settlement document does not specify which hazardous waste streams TCC Materials was generating or storing, a critical gap in public transparency.

The failure to label used oil totes under 40 C.F.R. § 279.22(c) carries its own environmental risk profile. Used oil is a regulated substance under RCRA specifically because improper disposal or handling can contaminate soil and groundwater. One gallon of used oil can contaminate up to one million gallons of drinking water. When containers of used oil are not clearly identified, the likelihood of accidental mishandling, improper disposal, or mixing with other substances increases substantially. The scale of potential environmental harm from this single violation vastly outpaces the $10,000 ($10,000: enough to clean up approximately zero square feet of a serious soil contamination site) penalty TCC Materials paid.

Public Health

The cascade of labeling and container failures at TCC Materials translated directly into elevated risk for every worker and every person living near the facility during the period of these violations. Workers encountering unlabeled hazardous waste containers without knowing their contents cannot make informed decisions about protective equipment, safe handling distances, or emergency procedures. The absence of a current contingency plan on-site compounded this risk: if an incident had occurred, the response would have been improvised rather than systematic.

Wyandotte County, Kansas, where this facility operates, already carries disproportionate environmental health burdens. Communities of color and low-income communities in this region have historically faced concentrated industrial activity with inadequate regulatory oversight. Facilities like TCC Materials that cut corners on hazardous waste safety do not operate in a vacuum. They add cumulative exposure burden onto populations that are already dealing with higher baseline rates of pollution-related illness. A $10,000 ($10,000: the average American spends more than this on healthcare in a single year) penalty does nothing to address that cumulative harm.

Economic Inequality

The economic logic of this settlement reveals a deeply unequal system. TCC Materials committed eight documented federal hazardous waste violations and paid $10,000 ($10,000: less than the annual cost of one entry-level employee’s health insurance premium). That works out to $1,250 per violation. For a materials company operating a facility large enough to generate hazardous waste at levels subject to large-quantity generator rules, $10,000 is a rounding error on a quarterly budget line, not a deterrent.

RCRA penalties can reach up to $70,117 per violation per day under the law. Even applying the most conservative possible reading, the gap between the legal maximum and what TCC Materials actually paid is staggering. The maximum statutory penalty exposure for eight violations over a 90-plus day storage period alone could have reached into the millions of dollars. The fact that the EPA settled for $10,000 means the company externalized the full cost of its non-compliance onto the surrounding community while facing essentially zero financial consequence. The workers and neighbors near 636 S. 66th Terrace absorbed the risk. TCC Materials absorbed the savings.

The Numbers Behind the Settlement

Who Is Watching. What You Can Do.

The People Involved

The settlement document names Jerry Winters, Plant Manager at TCC Materials (jwinters@tccmaterials.com) as the facility’s primary representative. It also names Vanessa De La Vega Meza, Senior Environmental Specialist at Cemstone (vdelavegameza@cemstone.com) — a detail that connects TCC Materials to the larger Cemstone construction materials network. The fact that TCC Materials’ environmental compliance contact routes through a Cemstone email address raises questions about the corporate structure and accountability chain above the plant manager level.

Regulatory Bodies on Watch

• EPA Region 7 — Filed and resolved this enforcement action. Paragraph 11 of the settlement explicitly reserves EPA’s right to pursue future violations at this facility.
• Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), Bureau of Waste Management — Notified of the violations and copied on the final order. State-level oversight of this facility should continue independently of the federal settlement.
• KDHE Compliance and Enforcement, Waste Reduction, and Assistance Section — Also copied on the order. Kansas regulators now have official notice of what the EPA found at this address.

Grassroots Next Steps

If you live or work near 636 S. 66th Terrace in Kansas City, Kansas, you have the right to know what hazardous waste streams this facility generates. File a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with EPA Region 7 for TCC Materials’ RCRA generator reports and inspection history. Connect with Wyandotte County environmental justice organizations — local mutual aid networks have fought industrial pollution in this county before and they know how to read enforcement documents. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has a public comment process; use it. A $10,000 settlement means the regulatory system did not fight for your neighborhood. Organizing means you do it yourself.