Kroger owns and operates approximately 6600 commercial refrigeration appliances and comfort cooling appliances that use ozone depleting substances as the refrigerant at 2,735 grocery stores in 36 States and the District of Columbia. Kroger violated the leak rate standard and recordkeeping requirements in 40 C.F.R. Part 82, Subpart F at some of those 6600 appliances. Kroger agreed: 1, to maintain its 9.5% company-wide average leak rate; 2, to retrofit or retire 600 appliances over the 3-year consent decree; 3, to retrofit or retire the only remaining industrial process refrigeration unit that uses an ozone depleting substance as the refrigerant; and 4, to implement a Refrigerant Compliance Management Plan.
The case team reviewed appliance repair and refrigerant addition information for 1063 appliances and found 22 leak rate violations. Because Kroger wanted a release for violations at all of its stores, it agreed to a procedure by which the case team extrapolated the rate of violations to Kroger's entire fleet of appliances. The extrapolated penalty was $3,576,715. The parties agreed to a civil penalty of $2.5 million.