A prominent Weld County rancher was sentenced Friday to five months in federal prison for violating environmental laws.
Michael Cervi, 69, and employees of a business that processes oil-drilling wastewater tampered with a leak-detection system that allowed environmental contamination.
Cervi, who is among the largest landowners in Weld County, also is a well-known rodeo stock contractor, providing bulls, bucking horses, roping calves and steers to some of the country’s biggest and best rodeos.
In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham ordered Cervi to spend five months on home detention after being released from prison.
Cervi, who lives in Roggen, also was ordered to pay $233,000 in cleanup costs, a $30,000 fine and perform 50 hours of community service. For his community service, Cervi will have to publicly speak to ranching and rodeo groups about his crimes and his experience in prison.
According to court documents, Cervi owned and operated Envirocycle, a business near LaSalle that processes wastewater from oil-drilling operations.
In November 1999, Cervi got a permit from Colorado’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to inject the wastewater into a deep underground water aquifer. The wastewater contained toxic compounds including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene. The permit required the company to build and maintain a leak-detection system.
In the spring of 2001, Envirocycle employees found fluids contaminated with petroleum in the detection system. Cervi and an employee decided to fix the problem by sealing off the leak detection system so that fluids in it would not reach a monitoring point, according to federal court documents.
Cervi then ordered his ranch employees to alter the system, according to records. He told them to put clean water in a dummy sampling tube and submitted samples from that tube to the Weld County Health Department.
The tampering was discovered in 2002, after another company bought the facility. Contamination also was found.
In April, Cervi was charged with willful violation of an underground injection control program, a violation of the federal Safe Water Drinking Act.
Staff writer Alicia Caldwell can be reached at 303-820-1930 or acaldwell@denverpost.com.
