lincalca@lohud.com

The U.S. Attorney's Office has both filed and settled a lawsuit against the town of Ramapo for violations of the Clean Water Act involving the illegal filling of wetlands during construction of Provident Bank Park.

Ramapo must address the environmental issues and pay a $125,000 penalty, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The federal government and Ramapo, which admits to the violations, have entered into a consent decree that will be open for public comment for the next 30 days. The court must approval the final agreement.

Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and Col. Paul E. Owen, commander of the New York District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, announced the lawsuit and the consent decree that settles the matter Tuesday.

According to legal papers filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District in White Plains, Ramapo illegally discharged fill material into 1.11 acres of wetlands during construction of its minor league baseball stadium in 2010.

The wetlands are in a tract along Fireman's Memorial Drive, which runs along the east side of the stadium.

The town only sought and received a permit from the Army Corps, as required under the federal Clean Water Act, after filling in the wetlands.

The permit required Ramapo to establish about 1.88 acres of wetlands on the same tract to make up for the loss of the wetlands it filled in.

It was also supposed to provide annual progress reports to the Army Corps starting on Oct. 15, 2011 and to secure a conservation easement on the site to guarantee its preservation for wetland and wildlife resources by June 14, 2011.

Ramapo never took those steps and further, Bharara's office said, after applying for the permit, the town illegally discharged further fill material into additional wetlands of about 0.13 acres.

As a result of its actions, the town is and has been, since at least June 14, 2011, in violation of the permit and the Clean Water Act.

"The town appreciates the efforts of the Army Corps in safeguarding our wetlands which are crucial to our community's environmental health, and we accept our responsibility to correct conditions which were mistakenly created during the project's construction," Ramapo Town Attorney Michel L. Klein said in a statement Tuesday night.

Provident Bank Park is home to the Boulders minor league baseball team. The stadium was privately financed with $25 million in bonds with the town as guarantor after taxpayers rejected public funding for the project in a referendum.

Meanwhile, Ramapo remains the subject of a potentially criminal federal investigation after FBI agents raided Town Hall on May 15 and took financial documents related to the town's relationship with the Ramapo Local Development Corp., created to handle the stadium's financing.

Shortly after the raid, a federal grand jury subpoenaed other records for an investigation into the town's sale of millions of dollars in bonds for the baseball stadium and certain bank loans.

Twitter: @LauraLoHud