## Facts

- Plaza Health Laboratories, Inc. operated a blood-testing laboratory in Brooklyn, New York.
- Geronimo Villegas, a co-owner and vice president, transported containers holding numerous vials of human blood from the laboratory to his New Jersey residence along the Hudson River.
- On at least two occasions in 1988, Villegas placed containers of blood vials at the river’s edge; at least once he put them within a crevice in a bulkhead below the high-water line.
- In May 1988, students discovered dozens of vials on the Staten Island shore and in the water; city workers recovered approximately 70 vials.
- In September 1988, additional vials were found near Villegas’s condominium complex; some recovered vials contained blood infected with hepatitis B.
- The recovered vials were traced to Plaza Health Laboratories.

## Issues

1. Whether a human being can be a “point source” under the Clean Water Act, such that an individual may be convicted of knowingly discharging pollutants from a point source into navigable waters without a permit under 33 U.S.C. §§ 1311(a) and 1319(c)(2).
2. Whether the government could sustain “knowing endangerment” charges under 33 U.S.C. § 1319(c)(3) on this discharge theory, and whether the district court properly entered a post-verdict judgment of acquittal on those counts.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit reversed Villegas’s felony convictions under 33 U.S.C. § 1319(c)(2) and remanded with instructions to dismiss those counts.
- The court held that a human being does not fall within the Clean Water Act’s definition of “point source,” so the charged “discharge of a pollutant” element was not satisfied.
- Because the point-source theory failed, the government’s cross-appeal seeking reinstatement of the knowing-endangerment counts was rejected, leaving the district court’s judgment of acquittal in place.

## Legal Principles

- Under the Clean Water Act, a “discharge of a pollutant” requires an “addition” to navigable waters “from any point source”; criminal liability under § 1319(c)(2) depends on proving that element as charged.
- The statutory definition of “point source” (a “discernible, confined and discrete conveyance,” with examples such as pipes, containers, rolling stock, and vessels) is directed to instrumentalities of industrial or municipal discharge, not the human actor.
- In criminal prosecutions, statutory ambiguity about whether conduct is covered must be resolved in favor of the defendant under the rule of lenity; felony environmental liability requires clear notice.
- The existence of other statutes addressing dumping into navigable waters supports a restrained reading of the Clean Water Act’s felony provisions when the charged theory does not fit the statutory elements.

## Conclusion

The Second Circuit concluded that the Clean Water Act’s felony discharge provisions, as charged, did not reach an individual’s direct placement of blood vials into the Hudson River because a person is not a “point source,” and it reversed the discharge convictions while leaving the post-verdict acquittals on knowing-endangerment counts undisturbed.


United States v. Plaza Health Labs., Inc., 3 F.3d 643 (2d Cir. 1993)