ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY

ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY, a privately held operation based in Altair, Texas (NAICS 42393, Recyclable Material Merchant Wholesalers), registers in EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online system under facility identifier 110067678622 [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. The numbers are stark. As of the ECHO data snapshot dated 2026-05-04, the single registered facility carries eight quarters of noncompliance within the trailing 24-month window and a derived penalty exposure of approximately $72.4 million, calculated by pro-rating the five-year total penalty figure reported in ECHO by a 24/60 factor [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. The most recent active permit on record carries an issuance date of 2020-05-19, and the ECHO export reports zero currently active permits — a combination that warrants direct verification against Texas Commission on Environmental Quality records before any downstream modeling begins [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip].

Because ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY is privately held, no SEC 10-K, 10-Q, or proxy filings are available on EDGAR for this entity, and the CIK field is null [source: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany]. No company-issued sustainability report, NGO litigation surface, state-level enforcement docket, or news coverage was returned by the research bundle for either the 30-day company window or the 365-day facility window. That absence of corroborating documents narrows this briefing to federal ECHO data and publicly accessible EPA program references [source: https://echo.epa.gov/]. Readers should treat the derived penalty figure as a mechanical extrapolation rather than a confirmed adjudicated sum. ECHO's own methodology notes that five-year penalty totals may include federal judicial, federal administrative, and state-reported penalties with varying degrees of finality [source: https://echo.epa.gov/help/facility-search/search-results-help].

The compliance profile for ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY rests on a single ECHO-registered site in Colorado County, Texas, operating under NAICS 42393 — a code covering merchant wholesalers of recyclable materials including metal, paper, plastic, and related secondary commodities [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. Eight quarters flagged for noncompliance in the trailing 24 months is the ceiling. Under ECHO's derivation rule (viol_24mo = min(qtrs_with_nc, 8)), that reading indicates the facility drew a citation in every available quarter of the window, not merely most of them [source: https://echo.epa.gov/help/reports/dfr-help]. The environmental justice index average is reported as 0.0, a value that typically reflects either a facility in a low-population census block or incomplete EJSCREEN linkage rather than a substantive finding of zero demographic exposure [source: https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen].

A quarter-by-quarter reconstruction of the past 24 months is constrained by the absence of quarter-level detail in the supplied bundle, but the ECHO export's as-of date of 2026-05-04 places the window at approximately Q2 2024 through Q1 2026 [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. The latest permit action logged in ECHO carries the date 2020-05-19. The active-permit count of zero suggests either lapse, transfer, or administrative continuation under a state-delegated program such as the Texas Pollutant Discharge Elimination System administered by TCEQ [source: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/permitting/wastewater]. Under EPA's delegation framework, TCEQ carries primary enforcement authority for CWA NPDES, CAA Title V, and RCRA Subtitle C programs in Texas, and ECHO ingests state-reported data on a lag [source: https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-6-south-central].

The derived 24-month penalty total of $72,404,961.60 is a mechanical pro-ration of a five-year total and should not be read as a single adjudicated fine [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. ECHO's documentation states that penalty figures aggregate final assessed penalties from federal judicial consent decrees, federal administrative orders, and state actions where reported, and that supplemental environmental projects and cost recovery are sometimes folded into the aggregate [source: https://echo.epa.gov/help/reports/enforcement-case-report-help]. Without a case-by-case breakdown from ECHO's Integrated Compliance Information System detail pages, the supplied bundle cannot confirm which statutory program — Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act — accounts for the bulk of the reported penalty value [source: https://echo.epa.gov/tools/data-downloads/icis-fec-download-summary]. Analysts should pull the facility-specific Detailed Facility Report for identifier 110067678622 before relying on the $72.4 million figure in any downstream model [source: https://echo.epa.gov/detailed-facility-report?fid=110067678622].

Per-action breakdown at the granularity required for a case-by-case narrative is not present in the supplied research bundle. The ECHO exporter summary reports aggregate counts and totals rather than individual case IDs, docket numbers, or settlement dates [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. What the bundle does confirm: eight quarters of noncompliance and a derived penalty total of $72,404,961.60 across the 24-month window ending 2026-05-04, with no program-level disaggregation between CWA, CAA, or RCRA [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. That gap matters. For facility EPA ID 110067678622, analysts seeking case-level detail should query the ICIS-FE&C case download and the facility's Detailed Facility Report, both of which expose enforcement action type, lead agency, statutory authority, penalty assessed, and compliance schedule milestones [source: https://echo.epa.gov/tools/data-downloads/icis-fec-download-summary]. No Brave News results for the 365-day facility window were returned, meaning no contemporaneous media coverage of consent decrees, administrative orders, or notices of violation against ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY is available in this bundle to corroborate or contextualize the ECHO figures [source: https://search.brave.com/]. The zero active-permit count as of the export date, paired with a last permit date of 2020-05-19, is itself a compliance signal worth verification against TCEQ's Central Registry and the EPA Region 6 permit file [source: https://www15.tceq.texas.gov/crpub/].

ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY (EPA ID 110067678622), Altair, Colorado County, Texas — the single ECHO-registered site associated with this entity — accounts for 100% of the reported 24-month violation count of eight quarters and 100% of the derived $72.4 million penalty exposure [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. The EJ index average of 0.0 is anomalous. EPA's EJSCREEN methodology produces percentile indices ranging from 0 to 100 across demographic and environmental indicators, and a flat 0.0 typically signals either a rural census block with minimal population or a data-linkage gap between the facility coordinates and the EJSCREEN block-group layer [source: https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen/how-interpret-ejscreen-data]. Altair is an unincorporated community in Colorado County with a small residential population, a profile consistent with the low-index reading [source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/coloradocountytexas]. That said, low index values do not rule out exposure risk to nearby agricultural workers or to users of the Colorado River watershed downstream of the site. No secondary facilities were surfaced for this entity in the ECHO export, so the additional per-facility paragraphs that would ordinarily populate this section are not supported by the underlying data. Analysts should treat ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY as a single-site compliance profile rather than a multi-facility portfolio [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. Single-site status can be confirmed by searching the ECHO facility search interface by parent company name and by ZIP code 77412 [source: https://echo.epa.gov/facilities/facility-search].

The ECHO summary for ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY reports an empty top_pollutants array, meaning the exporter did not associate specific Toxics Release Inventory chemicals, NPDES effluent parameters, or CAA criteria pollutants with this facility at the time of the 2026-05-04 snapshot [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. The absence of named pollutants does not mean the site is clean. NAICS 42393 operations — recyclable material merchant wholesalers — commonly handle scrap metal, end-of-life vehicles, electronic waste, and post-consumer plastics, and the pollutant profile typical to the sector includes lead and lead compounds, used oil and petroleum hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls from legacy transformer dielectric fluids, and stormwater discharges carrying total suspended solids and dissolved metals [source: https://www.epa.gov/hw/defining-hazardous-waste-listed-characteristic-and-mixed-radiological-wastes]. Lead exposure pathways are multiple. Inhalation of particulate from shredding and torch-cutting operations, incidental soil ingestion in adjacent residential areas, and surface-water migration via uncontrolled stormwater each represent distinct routes. EPA's Integrated Risk Information System profile for lead documents developmental neurotoxicity at blood lead levels once considered safe [source: https://www.epa.gov/lead/learn-about-lead]. Used oil and petroleum hydrocarbons are regulated under 40 CFR Part 279 and, when mismanaged, contaminate groundwater and surface water with benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes — several of which carry IARC Group 1 or 2A carcinogen classifications [source: https://www.epa.gov/hwgenerators/managing-used-oil-answers-frequent-questions-businesses]. Stormwater discharges from scrap yards fall specifically under EPA's Multi-Sector General Permit Sector N, which sets benchmark monitoring thresholds for aluminum, iron, lead, and zinc. Exceedances of those benchmarks are a common driver of CWA noncompliance findings at NAICS 42393 sites [source: https://www.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater-discharges-industrial-activities-epas-2021-msgp]. Because the ECHO bundle supplied does not name specific pollutants for this facility, the pathway and toxicity discussion above is sector-typical rather than site-confirmed [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip].

The NAICS peer benchmark array supplied in the research bundle is empty, which means no ranked peer set within NAICS 42393 is available for direct penalty or violation comparison in this briefing [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip]. Analysts wishing to construct a peer benchmark can filter the ECHO exporter by NAICS code 42393 and sort by penalty_total_5yr to generate a comparable cohort. Census Bureau NAICS documentation confirms the code's scope covers merchant wholesalers of recyclable materials including ferrous and nonferrous scrap, paper, plastic, and textile waste [source: https://www.census.gov/naics/?input=42393&year=2022]. Without that constructed cohort, the $72.4 million derived 24-month penalty figure for ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY cannot be placed on a percentile curve against its sector in this document [source: https://echo.epa.gov/files/echodownloads/echo_exporter.zip].

ALTAIR RECYCLING FACILITY is privately held with no CIK assigned, and no 10-K, 10-Q, or registration-statement filings are available on SEC EDGAR for this entity. Accordingly, no Item 1A forward-looking environmental risk factors can be quoted from the company's own securities disclosures in this briefing [source: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany]. Forward-looking regulatory exposure for NAICS 42393 operators in Texas is shaped by TCEQ enforcement priorities, EPA Region 6 inspection targeting, and the 2021 EPA Multi-Sector General Permit Sector N stormwater benchmarks — each of which remains applicable regardless of private-company status [source: https://www.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater-discharges-industrial-activities-epas-2021-msgp].