City's HydroVac Waste Plant Hit By Former City Engineer

Week of April 26, 1999

Nearly 100 companies in Chattanooga send their industrial pollutants to the HydroVac wastewater pretreatment plant, but the plant's design was rejected by the city's systems design engineer in 1989 and continues to operate outside of EPA guidelines.
In a memo this week, former city engineer George Kurz, who now works in Nashville, both commends the city for leading the way with proactive ordinances and admonishes the public works department for allowing "an obvious, pathetic attempt to cover up by HydroVac." In 1992, Kurz read a memo from Public Works Director Jack Marcellis indicating Marcellis had no copy of an approved engineering plan for HydroVac. Kurz said he "was certainly shocked to see the situation was still simmering." Two months later, Chemist John Henderson at the Moccasin Bend plant reported that a highly toxic chemical "slug" had exposed employees to poisons, the exact type of incident EPA regs and proper engineering plans for pretreatment plants are designed to prevent.

HydroVac collects crank case oil and used petroleums, waste oil and grease from fast food restaurants, dry cleaning fluids, latex pollutants from carpet mills and many other wastes. The company has been publicly challenged for ten years by environmental whistleblower Ernest Oliver who has charged in multiple lawsuits that HydroVac illegally accepts toxic waste, dumps pollutants directly into the Chattanooga Creek and Tennessee River, and disposes highly poisonous solids into the city landfill.

"My conscience is clear," HydroVac owner Bill Foxworth told the Chattanooga Fax. "I go to sleep at night without worrying about Mr. Oliver's allegations." In fact, "I'm probably more for the environment than any man on earth."

\Oliver's allegations were corroborated by two of Foxworth's former employees. Randall Blevins, who testified under oath that 80% of the waste that came to HydroVac was never treated, said Foxworth ordered tankers to allow "untreated liquid waste to run into the ditch and into the Chattanooga Creek." Jerry Magness swore in a 1992 affidavit that 100 to 150 barrels of liquid waste were buried 20 feet beneath the ground at the HydroVac facility that borders the creek and river. EPA regulation 40 CFR 403 allows municipalities to oversee pretreatment activities rather than direct EPA oversight if the local government "ensure(s) compliance by Industrial Users with applicable Pretreatment Standards and Requirements."
Chattanooga's city charter Article III, Section 31-50 states that "wastewater pretreatment facilities shall be prepared, signed, dated, and sealed by a registered engineer..."

EPA pretreatment regulations are by law enforced by the city of Chattanooga through the Moccasin Bend Wastewater Treatment Plant. Kurz specifically rejected the engineering plans for HydroVac's plant He told the Chattanooga Fax that he only rejected two out of nearly 200 plans over his 12-year tenure. "It was that unusual," he said. Ernest Oliver says Kurz' successor, Alice Canella, has not inspected or approved HydroVac's design and says she told him HydroVac continues to operate because Kurz approved the design.

Calls to Public Works Director Jack Marcellis were not returned and written questions on the matter to Marcellis and Moccasin Bend Plant Director Eugene Wright were not answered.

Earlier, Mr. Wright showed the Chattanooga Fax a copy of the permit he signed for HydroVac but could not produce a document showing approval by a qualified engineer for the plant's design.

In his April 19 memo, George Kurz admits "there were a few times we were lied to, or otherwise mislead for a while" regarding the HydroVac saga. "There were a number of times during (and since) my work in Chattanooga that I wished that I had taken stronger enforcement action against certain dischargers," he said.

However, Kurz praised city leaders for being the first in Tennessee to implement a pretreatment enforcement plan and the only city to implement it on schedule in 1983. He said the early action "resulted in the elimination of tons of pollutants from water, long before many other cities even got a program on paper."

Nevertheless, Kurz admits the lack of a proper engineering plan for the HydroVac pretreatment plant "is a pretty big deal." A 1996 unannounced inspection of HydroVac by Moccasin Bend cites an employee "running" from the office to remove evidence of tampering with the sewer monitor. HydroVac was also cited for "nickel and zinc violations" and for "discharging a black oily latex substance" into the sewer.

Moccasin Bend Director Eugene Wright wrote in a report about that inspection that the facility "is being haphazardly managed." He said "the time has come to replace the 'band aid' remedy approach with a permanent solution."
Apparently, that new solution does not yet include requiring HydroVac to meet EPA regulations for an approved plant design. In response to these recent violations, Kurz wrote that there was "an obvious, pathetic attempt to cover-up by HydroVac," indicating a need for "decisive action." It was, he said, "a clear and deliberate violation that would justify the harshest penalty." Kurz sent his memo in response to being questioned by the Chattanooga Fax and forwarded it to Marcellis, Wright, Alice Canella, Rick Tate, and the City Attorney's office.

Ernest Oliver's lawsuit against HydroVac was finally rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, but he won his complaint before the Dept. of Labor. Secretary Robert Reich ordered HydroVac to pay Oliver $25,018 in back pay and concluded "Oliver's concerns that the contaminates would run-off and pollute the nearby Tennessee River was reasonable..." Oliver has complained that the investigation opened in 1990 by Captain Parks of the City of Chattanooga's Internal Affairs Department was never closed. The Chattanooga Fax called Parks on April 16, 1999 to inquire on the investigation. Four days later, Parks' attorney faxed a summary of the investigation stating that the case was closed on April 16, 1999 "based on a lack of evidence or information which would substantiate the allegation."