Who knew that the EPA has its own most wanted list?  

On Friday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that U.S. and Mexican agents nabbed Robert Wainwright living the high life south of the border.  Wainwright, arrested in Zamora this week, was wanted for allegedly dumping steel mill waste in an Indiana wetland while working as a manager for Sterling Material Services in Lake County.

Based on the EPA’s wanted poster, Wainwright is a portly 66-year-old with a scar above his left eye. A convicted child molester who was also found guilty of firearms violations in 2007, Wainwright fled the country while the Northern Indiana Environmental Crimes Task Force was investigating his alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.

With Wainwright’s arrest following two anonymous tips, EPA officials can cross another of its 21 most wanted fugitives off their list. “He’s the third one they’ve captured since they put they put this Web site up" in December 2008, says EPA spokesperson Karen Thompson.

Still at large, according to the list, are such rascals as Mahmoud Almchie, charged with possessing 3,150 pounds of “ozone depleting contraband” and Denis Feron, owner of Chemetco, which allegedly “had a secret pipe installed behind its [Illinois] facility that was discharging pollutants into a tributary of the Mississippi River.

Image of Robert Wainwright courtesy U.S. Environmental Protection Agency