METHUEN — A construction company working on a Toll Brothers development off Pond Street has been hit with $197,000 in fines for unsafe working conditions at the residential site.

In late October, inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in Andover inspected the work site of luxury homes, called Villas at Merrimack Green, and found employees for New Place Carpentry of New Haven, Conn., working on roof trusses without fall protection.

The inspectors found that the men also lacked "fall protection training and had accessed an upper work surface via a ladder that did not extend above the surface for required stability.

"Additional hazards identified at the job sites include gasoline-powered equipment left running while being refueled, power tools lowered to the ground by their cords, untrained fork truck operators, no fire extinguishers, debris with protruding nails in work areas, no hard hats where overhead hazards were present and no eye protection for workers using nail guns."

Ted Fitzgerald, spokesman for OSHA, said the company was cited last week for the infractions, which are part of a larger group of infractions, including violations in Plymouth, Mass., for which the company was hit with a $111,500 fine.

It is not the first time the company has been cited by OSHA, Fitzgerald said.

"These are sizable fines," he said. "They reflect both the history of previous violations for similar hazards and willful citations — the most severe — because the contractor actively disregarded safety measures."

The contractor, which primarily performs residential framing work, has been cited by OSHA eight times since July 2003. Fines from earlier investigations total $171,700 for failing to provide fall protection and other required safeguards for workers at job sites in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

"The sizable fines proposed here reflect the gravity of these hazards and this employer's ongoing refusal to comply with basic, common sense and legally required protections for its workers," said Marthe Kent, OSHA's New England regional administrator. "Falls remain the number one killer in construction work. Employers who repeatedly fail to provide and ensure fall protection continue to place their workers' lives at needless risk."

Both of the latest inspections found workers engaged in residential construction work at heights greater than 6 feet without any form of fall protection.

Workers at the Plymouth site were working on unguarded, inadequately constructed and uninspected scaffolds, and were not trained to recognize scaffold hazards.

The company has 15 business days from receipt of its citations and proposed penalties to comply, meet with OSHA, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

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