THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 18, 1997 TAG: 9701180380
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 105 lines
Soon after joining Smithfield Foods Inc. in 1983, Terry Lynn Rettig says he learned a valuable lesson about how the East Coast's largest pork processor deals with its chronic pollution problems.
After writing a memo suggesting improvements to aging sewage plants known to spew thick streams of hog waste and bacteria into the nearby Pagan River, Rettig says his boss went ballistic.
``He immediately destroyed the memorandum and sternly admonished me to never write anything like that again,'' Rettig writes in a 20-page affadavit, released this week in federal court in Norfolk. ``He said it could be incriminating to the company and, if discovered by opponents, could be used against the company.''
So, by his account, began Rettig's 13-year career at Smithfield Foods - a disastrous run that saw him falsifying state pollution reports, destroying records, lying to state officials and, ultimately, being sentenced Thursday to 30 months in prison for 23 violations of the national Clean Water Act.
In the affidavit, which reads like a personal confession, Rettig accuses senior managers at Smithfield Foods of not only knowing about persistent pollution violations from company slaughterhouses, but encouraging their cover-up through bogus reports to state regulators.
While rejected by many officials as a desperate act from a desperate man, the affidavit nonetheless adds grist to an already explosive case involving one of the biggest employers in Hampton Roads. Smithfield Foods has been cited hundreds of times for pollution violations since the 1970s and faces two civil lawsuits for alleged environmental offenses in the 1990s.
Rettig's attorney, Charles R. Burke of Virginia Beach, concedes that Rettig was never overtly told to break the law. Instead, Burke and the affidavit claim, Rettig was pressured to ``fix'' problems, to not report violations and was always told so in face-to-face exchanges where nothing was committed to writing.
``My supervisors knew I was cooking the books,'' Rettig wrote. ``Each of them let this continue because it saved the company money and made their jobs easier to manage.''
While Rettig portrays himself as ``a pawn, a scapegoat, a fool,'' as he wrote, federal prosecutors and Smithfield officials maintain that the Virginia Beach resident was a rogue polluter, a guy who cut corners and got caught.
Faced with increasing financial needs at home, they argue, Rettig started his own company in 1990 and began operating sewage plants for Smithfield Foods, the town of Surry, a truck stop and a mobile home park. Even by his own accounts, the workload soon became too much.
To meet deadlines, Rettig began to file unsubstantiated reports with the state Department of Environmental Quality. He swore that his clients were in compliance with all environmental laws when he often did not even check their performance, according to court records and prosecutors.
``At one time or another, at one place or another, the defendant knowingly committed just about every wastewater violation a plant operator can commit,'' said Justice Department trial lawyer John Smeltzer.
Rettig denies none of this. Instead, he says he learned how to falsify reports at Smithfield Foods and simply transferred this knowledge to his business, A.T.R. Systems Management, which eventually failed in 1994 when clients and state inspectors got wise to his tricks.
``The house of cards, the outside employment, began to take a toll,'' Rettig wrote. ``Working full time at Smithfield, then taking on . . . other locations required more hours than a day could provide.''
From 1983 to 1995, Rettig was responsible for drafting monthly reports detailing the amount of pollutants stemming from Smithfield Foods in Isle of Wight County. State officials rely on the integrity of these reports to determine which companies are complying with the law.
Anthony Troy, an attorney for Smithfield, asks rhetorically that if Rettig's accusations are so credible and damning, why haven't federal prosecutors moved in for the kill against other company officials?
Indeed, the Justice Department informed Smithfield Foods last April that its criminal investigation, ongoing for months, had come to center on just one employee: Rettig.
Troy also notes that Rettig signed a sworn statement before leaving Smithfield Foods in 1995 that stressed that no one directed him to break any laws.
Asked about that sworn statement Friday, Burke says Rettig was asked to sign the paper ``basically on his way out the door; Terry wanted out of there and just signed it.''
Burke says it was a ``tactical decision'' to keep Rettig's accusations quiet until this week, hoping that government lawyers would give his client a lighter sentence because of the inside information.
When it became clear that no such help was forthcoming, Burke released the affidavit, with a copy going to U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, who sentenced Rettig Thursday.
Rettig's accusations come as Smithfield Foods prepares to defend itself against two major lawsuits for past environmental violations. Burke says Rettig is ready to testify against his former employer if called, and will continue to cooperate with the government in any way.
The Virginia attorney general is seeking unspecified penalties for alleged pollution violations since 1994. And the Justice Department is suing for as much as $125 million for more than 5,000 offenses it alleges since 1991.
Carl Wood, Smithfield Foods's vice president in charge of engineering, who once supervised Rettig, said the affidavit is largely fiction and doubted it would have any bearing on the cases or on company policy.
Wood said it was Smithfield employees who turned over damaging records to state inspectors that were found hidden in Rettig's personnel files.
The records, Wood said, showed two different sets of numbers for pollution readings at company sewage plants - one factual and one fiction. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
Excerpt from affidavit by Terry Lynn Rettig:
``My supervisors knew I was cooking the books. Each of them let
this continue because it saved the company money and made their jobs
easier to manage.''
KEYWORDS: WATER POLLUTION FRAUD