Sanitation Salvage Loses Appeal to Regain License

Sanitation Salvage lost its appeal last Friday to regain its license in New York City. This comes after the private waste hauler appealed the New York City Business Integrity Commission’s (BIC) decision to suspend the company’s business license.

In May, Sean Spence, a driver for Sanitation Salvage in the Bronx, N.Y., allegedly struck and killed an elderly man and a “homeless man” within a six-month period. (Further investigation found that the “homeless man” was actually an off-the-books employee who had been working for Sanitation Salvage for more than a year.)

Both of these fatal incidents were deemed accidents, according to police, and Spence was not charged with either incident. He was, however, barred from driving private garbage trucks in the city months after the second incident.

Days after BIC suspended the company’s license, Sanitation Salvage fought back with a lawsuit against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, claiming it was never given the chance to defend itself.

New York Daily News has more details:

Sanitation Salvage won’t be able to operate on city streets until an independent auditor — which the city will pick, but the company will pay for — can clean up the killer carting company’s mess, officials said.

In a 10-page decision handed down Friday, the Business Integrity Commission said Sanitation Salvage “may not operate as a trade waste business in the City of New York until such time as (it) demonstrates to the satisfaction of the commission that it no longer poses an imminent danger to life or property.”

The commission noted that Sanitation Salvage “did not dispute the evidence that many of its drivers on many occasions create a danger to life or property when they operate trucks after having been on duty for 70 hours in a period of eight consecutive days.”

Read the full article here.