PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Lori Sitler, Department of Justice Maria Taylor, DNREC

Phone: (302) 577-8314 (302) 739-4506

Pager: (302) 247-1132

Date: May 17, 2004

ENVIRONMENTAL OFFENDER PLEADS GUILTY

James E. Tennefoss and his businesses responsible for environmental 

and building code violations

(Dover, DE): Attorney General M. Jane Brady and Secretary of the Department of Natural 
Resources and Environmental Control, John A. Hughes, announce that James E. Tennefoss individually 
and as President of Delaware Renting, Inc. and President of Jim Lee, Inc. pled guilty today to 
misdemeanor charges stemming from environmental and building code violations at several locations in 
the Frankford, Georgetown and Bridgeville areas of Sussex County.



The pleas, entered before Judge Richard F. Stokes in Georgetown, resolve three 
misdemeanor charges filed by Information by the Attorney General’s Office against Tennefoss and the 
above named businesses. Tennefoss, personally and on behalf of his businesses, pled guilty to 
discharging a pollutant into surface water without a permit and 2 counts of discharging of wastewater 
onto the ground surface. 



Tennefoss and his businesses were accused of discharging pipes without a permit into a 
creek adjacent to the Honolulu Mobile Home Park in Frankford, and discharging untreated or partially 
treated wastewater or septic tank effluent onto the ground surface without a permit at his properties 
located on Deer Forest Road in Georgetown and on Route 18 in Bridgeville.



As part of the plea agreement, Tennefoss will remedy the outstanding environmental and 
building code violations within 15 months of sentencing at 17 separate sites - properties named in 
the Information and other properties around Sussex County – which he or his businesses own. Judge 
Stokes sentenced Tennefoss to a total of $75,000 in fines, of which $45,000 was suspended by the 
Court for the defendant’s agreement to rectify the violations within the stated timeframe. 

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