Santa Fe hospital fined $55,800

SANTA FE -- Maybe a hefty fine is the best medicine.

The Environment Department has tagged St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe with a $55,800 penalty for dumping potentially infectious medical waste in the city landfill last year. Environment Department investigators said that on three occasions they discovered landfill-bound trucks from the hospital containing gauze, bandages, bedding, syringes and other medical trash, according to a news release.

It's not the first time. Regulators say they found 14-truckloads containing similar waste at the Caja del Rio landfill  in 2006. There was no financial penalty then -- the Department instead handed the hospital a violation notice, ordering the facility to revise management plans and implement additional inspection procedures. The hospital complied with those conditions, according to the Environment Department, but that apparently wasn't enough to prevent last year's relapse. Blood-contaminated syringes and the like are supposed to be sent down to an Albuquerque disposal facility in sealed biohazard containers.

“Solid waste regulations are intended to protect residents and landfill workers from the effects of potentially harmful materials,” state Environment Secretary Ron Curry said in the news release. “St. Vincent violated those regulations by allowing infectious waste to slip past the appropriate checks at the hospital and be disposed of at a local landfill.”

The hospital has 30 days to respond to the Environment Department's penalty notice, and it can try to negotiate a lower fine or some other sort of settlement. St. Vincent spokesman Arturo Delgado said Thursday that hospital administrators plan to meet with regulators to discuss how they will proceed.

Hospital officials have said the waste posed minimal risk to the public. Since the 2007 discovery, the hospital has "implemented a number of new procedures, including training and education for our employees to prevent this from happening in the future," Delgado said.

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