THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 1996 TAG: 9609250413
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 87 lines
A federal grand jury Tuesday indicted the former sewage plant operator for both Smithfield Foods Inc. and the town of Surry on charges of dumping contaminated wastes into local waters and then lying about it on state reports.
Terry Lynn Rettig of Virginia Beach already has been fined $250 by a state oversight board for falsifying signatures on pollution reports at two other sewage plants he managed, in Suffolk and Virginia Beach.
But this case is much more serious. It includes accusations that Rettig destroyed three years' worth of plant records at Smithfield Foods after telling state environmental inspectors that the documents had been lost.
He also is charged with releasing millions of gallons of nutrient-laden sewage into the Pagan River, a tributary of the James River and Chesapeake Bay, knowing that the effluent from Smithfield's pork packing houses in Isle of Wight County did not pass health and environmental standards.
In addition, Rettig is accused of forging laboratory reports saying that Surry's sewage treatment plant in May 1992 met safety limits for several pollutants when no testing had been done.
A town official said Tuesday that Rettig ``left here a long time ago'' and has not operated Surry's municipal plant for years.
If convicted of all 23 counts in the wide-ranging indictment, which alleges violations of the national Clean Water Act from 1991 to 1994, Rettig could face a maximum penalty of 54 years in prison and a fine of $5.75 million, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
``When a licensed operator knowingly breaches the public trust, we must take strong enforcement measures to ensure future compliance,'' Helen F. Fahey, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.
Rettig was an employee of Smithfield Foods in 1990 when he founded A-T.R. Management Inc., a sewage plant monitoring company with numerous contracts in South Hampton Roads, including the town of Surry.
He declined to comment about the indictments when reached at home Tuesday.
His attorney, Charles R. Burke of Virginia Beach, had not seen the indictment but issued a short statement late Tuesday night saying that his client had cooperated with federal investigators, including discussion of a plea agreement.
``It had been Terry Rettig's anticipation that this case would be resolved through cooperation and not tried in the press, either as a civil or a criminal case,'' according to Burke's statement.
The indictment ends a two-year investigation by the FBI, the Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency into Rettig's performance as an enterprising businessman and busy sewage plant operator.
It also comes just weeks after Virginia Attorney General James S. Gilmore III filed a civil lawsuit against Smithfield Foods, seeking as much as $1.3 million in fines for past environmental violations.
Chiefly, Rettig was responsible for preparing and verifying monthly water-pollution reports at several small area sewage plants - and two large ones at Smithfield Foods, each releasing more than 1 million gallons of waste a day - to show their compliance with environmental regulations.
He had done so at Smithfield since 1983. The meat-packing giant, which slaughters thousands of hogs a day for the company's famous hams and sausages, has been in trouble for years with state environmental inspectors over excessive pollution. Inspectors rely almost exclusively on the integrity of the monthly reports to determine whether a company has violated pollution rules.
In August 1995, records show, Rettig was asked to resign from Smithfield Foods. That was a full year after he told state inspectors that he could not find paperwork detailing how much slaughterhouse waste, chemicals and nutrients had been discharged into the Pagan River.
The shallow snakelike river has been closed to shellfish harvesting since 1970 due to excessive amounts of fecal coliform, a bacteria found in warm-blooded animals that can carry disease.
After decades of fighting and negotiating with state officials, Smithfield is halfway through a project that will pipe its wastes to a public sewage plant in Suffolk, ending all discharges into the Pagan. A final connection is expected in early 1997.
In its annual report issued to shareholders this summer, Smithfield executives wrote that a federal attorney informed them this spring that the federal investigation was not targeting the company, but was instead focused on a former employee. Indeed, the indictment does not mention alleged wrongdoing by company management, only Rettig.
The indictment also accuses Rettig of allowing the release of unlawful sewage from a small plant he managed for Bowers Hill Econo-Travel, which may have damaged Goose Creek in March 1994.
And the grand jury found enough evidence to charge that Rettig knowingly discharged excessive sewage from Twin Ponds Mobile Home Park to Antioch Swamp, which feeds the Dismal Swamp river basin. MEMO: Staff Writer Lynn Waltz also contributed to this story. by CNB