Plumbing company employees plead guilty to illegal dumping that fouled Montgomery County pond

Neal Augenstein | naugenstein@wtop.com
February 19, 2025, 2:23 PM


Grease and wastewater pollute a Maryland pond. (Courtesy Maryland Attorney General's Office)

Two plumbing company employees have pleaded guilty to polluting a Montgomery County, Maryland, pond with grease and wastewater. ... Jaime Beza, 33, and Robert Dupey, 51, both employees of JPG Plumbing and Mechanical, Inc., admitted to dumping the contents of their truck into a manhole behind a 7-Eleven. ... Beza pleaded guilty in December 2024 and received probation and a $2,000 fine. Dupey received probation and a $1,000 fine. The fines will go to the Maryland Clean Water Fund.

Beza and Dupey were scheduled to vacuum water and sludge at a job in Montgomery County on April 18, 2024. ... “After Beza and Dupey picked up a truck from JPG’s business lot in Laurel, they discovered that the tank was filled with too much grease and other pollutants to complete the job,” according to Montgomery County’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Instead of making the two-hour round-trip drive to dispose of the waste properly at the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Facility in D.C., they drove to the nearby Ashton Village Center in Olney. ... There, they parked behind the 7-Eleven and emptied the truck’s contents into a manhole in the alleyway behind the store, according to a news release from the Maryland Attorney General’s Office. The manhole drains directly into Ashton Pond, which is part of a residential community.

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WTOP’s Abigail Constantino contributed to this report.

Neal Augenstein
Neal Augenstein has been a general assignment reporter with WTOP since 1997. He says he looks forward to coming to work every day, even though that means waking up at 3:30 a.m.

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