Wal-Mart's Waste Oil Dumped Directly Into Chattanooga Creek & Tennessee River, Says Oliver

Week of Oct. 16, 2000

According to a lawsuit filed by Hydro-Vac owner Bill Foxworth, a contract with 350 Wal-Mart stores in several states was recently canceled due to "spurious and false allegations relating to purported illegal actions" by Hydro-Vac.

Foxworth accuses former employees Greg Krum and Mike Truelove of informing Wal-Mart that HydroVac was violating environmental laws and regulations in Tennessee in connection with the work being performed for Wal-Mart.
Krum and Truelove now run Waste Haulers of Tennessee and are Foxworthâs competitors.

However, environmental whistleblower Ernest Oliver has now come forward to take responsibility for informing Wal-Mart. Oliver says he called corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas and informed them of the illegal hazardous waste dumping of Wal-Mart's used motor oil. 

In fact, Oliver has provided clear pictures of what he claims to be used motor oil being dumped directly into Chattanooga Creek and then into the river. According to Oliver, ãThere exists photographs, video tape, and tape recorded conversations of HydroVac employees admitting to illegal dumping activities.ä (To view these clear pictures, see www.ChattanoogaFax.com. The photos show large bins of waste oil stored uncovered at HydroVac and also show black oil pouring in large amounts from a HydroVac ditch directly into the Chattanooga Creek at a point just before the Creek joins the Tennessee River.)

Bill Wertz, a public relations official with Wal-Mart headquarters in Arkansas, spoke with Chattanooga Fax  but chose not to speak on the record until more of the facts were known. He did say that it is always Wal-Martâs practice to talk with the vendor regarding any complaints before canceling a contract.

Oliver has now been crusading against the toxic dumping by Foxworth for over ten years, since being fired as Foxworthâs lab director in 1989. After years of litigation, Oliverâs case was appealed to the Supreme Court,  but the justices chose not to hear the case. However, he was awarded $25,000 by  Department of Labor Secretary Robert Reich who agreed with Oliverâs accusation that HydroVac was dumping haz1ardous wastes into the Tennessee River.

Oliver claimed in 1989 and continues to insist today that Hydro-Vac collects hazardous and non-hazardous waste from nearly 100 local corporations, stores up to 700,000 gallons of the waste in several large tanks by Chattanooga Creek, and then dumps the tanks straight into the creek and nearby river during rainstorms when muddy waters disguise the pollutants.
Oliver's allegations were corroborated in a sworn affidavit by HydroVac employee Randall Blevins in 1991: "It is my belief, based on actual on-site experience, that no more than 20% of all liquid waste which came into Hydro-Vac was treated before it was discharged into the Chattanooga sewer system."

Blevins testified that he was ordered by his boss to "back a tanker up to the ditch which runs into the Chattanooga Creek, and have observed him allowing the untreated liquid waste to run into the ditch and into the Chattanooga Creek."
Foxworth, who was represented for a decade by William Colvin of the Schumacher & Thompson law firm, is represented in this lawsuit by Jeffrey Hollingsworth of Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel.

Oliver says that both of these pictures (above and below) show toxic fluides flowing directly from trucks into the Chattanooga Creek. In the picture above, fluid can be faintly seen dripping from two red trucks near 10:00 position into Chattanooga Creek at ride side of picture. In picture below, two red trucks are closer to 12:00 position, and toxic fluids -- Oliver says it is latex -- is more clearly visible flowing into Chattanooga Creek at bottom of picture. (These photos were taken by plane in 1991 while the three pictures showing oil dumping into Creek were taken just recently.)

According to Oliver this photo of the HydroVac plant shows a red dumpster or container in the foreground filled with old waste oil. A pipe takes the oil underground (beneath the white truck) and into a ditch on the other side of the white truck and eventually finds its way into Chattanooga Creek and the Tennessee River.