The Justice Department charged Andrew Walker with illegally dumping millions of gallons in industrial waste into the Jackson sewer system for a Rankin County company in a Bill of Information on August 20.
Walker owns Walker Environmental Services. The company operates as Rebel High Velocity Sewer Services on Wilmington Street in south Jackson. The Wilmington Street site has no permit for waste disposal. Such waste can only be released at "discharge points" that are designated for industrial waste.
The Bill of Information states a Rankin County company delivered industrial waste to Rebel. The Rankin County customer got in trouble and was looking for a quick fix to its industrial waste problem. The Bill alleges:
19. It was the purpose of the conspirators and the objective of their conspiracy to benefit financially by removing Company A's industrial waste from its production facility and trucking it to locations in Jackson where they discharged it into the sewer system of Jackson, Mississippi at unauthorized discharge points, thus avoiding the expense of the pretreatment required by law, sewer usage fees, and the cost of waste disposal at a permitted facility. The conspirators thereby sought to profit by evading the regulations that protect the infrastructure of Jackson's sewer system and the efficacy of its treatment plant.
20. On or about November 28, 2016, Individual A-1 contacted defendant ANDREW WALKER and requested that the defendant transport Company A's waste to JWTS's Savanna Street treatment plant for disposal. Individual A-1 told defendant ANDREW WALKER that this was necessary because Company A had recently been ordered by local authorities to stop illegally discharging its industrial waste into the JWTS sewer serving its production plant.
21. Between in or around November 28 and December 28, 2016, defendant ANDREW WALKER trucked and hauled Company A's wastewater to JWTS's Savanna Street treatment plant and then to his facility, Rebel, where he discharged it into a JWTS sewer.
22. In or around early January 2017, defendant ANDREW WALKER agreed with Individual A-1 to dispose of Company A's industrial waste at Rebel and to arrange with Company B for its delivery to Rebel. For almost a year, through October 2017, Company B transported millions of gallons of Company A's industrial waste to Rebel where defendant ANDREW WALKER, with the consent and assistance oflndividuals A-1, A-2, A-3, B-1, B-2, and B-3 illegally caused it to be pumped into JWTS, the same publicly owned wastewater treatment system into which Company A had already been prohibited from discharging it....
b. On or about December 28, 2016, defendant ANDREW WALKER telephoned Individual A-1 and told him that Rebel had a permit allowing him to discharge into the JWTS sewer wastewater he had sent through his grease removal equipment called an ALAR processor. Defendant ANDREW WALKER told Individual A-I that he was not using the ALAR equipment to process Company A's waste but, he said, it could "provide cover" for both of them...
The illegal discharges continued in 2017:
1. From January through October 2017, employees of Company A, as arranged and directed by Individuals A-1, A-2, and A-3, loaded approximately three million gallons of Company A's waste into Company B's tanker trucks for transportation to Rebel for disposal into the JWTS sewer system.The company paid Rebel for a job well done.
J. From January through October 2017, Company A sent checks signed by Individual A-2, paying Company B for services described as "Transport Non-Haz Wastewater to Rebel High Velocity For Disposal."
A Bill of Information usually means the defendant is cooperating and has already "cut a deal" with prosecutors.
Stay tuned.
Kingfish note: Sawces say part of the industrial waste was battery acid.
34 comments:
I wonder if this added to Jackson's problem of lead in the drinking water.
This SOB needs to be buried under the jail-
I don’t think so, 1:56, mainly because the timelines don’t sync. Jackson was having issues with elevated lead levels in the drinking water well before this alleged incident.
This situation is emblematic of how Niknar and Madison see Jackson as a cesspool of criminality and a dumping ground for undesirables. But clearly Jacksonians aren’t the only ones contributing to the poisoning of our rivers and streams.
That’s really shitty.
@1:56
Not likely. The system was designed to collect drinking water up river and release the sewage down river. So unless the Lumumba administration decided to start collecting drinking water down river from the waste discharge, then this would have no effect on Jackson's drinking water
Can't say the same for cities down river. Which is why you don't dump industrial waste in the sewer.
Rankin County shit in City of Jackson sewer system?? Is that about right? Who got paid? Talk about your shit lasagna....
Wait, does that say that rich, white peoples in stankin trucked their caustic waste over to Jackson and conspired to dump it into Jackson’s dilapidated, overtaxed sewer system? If so, then wow! Not a good look,
They shouldn't let assholes like this cut a deal. He knowingly polluted the sewer system in Jackson. This is not a small issue and I hope this scumbag spends decades in prison.
Let's see if this guy gets a blessing, or will this be a federal case?
What's the most likely penalty he faces? A fine? Jail time?
@2:37
A Jackson business got paid by a Rankin business to dispose of waste. What the Jackson business owner did with it after the fact is on the Jacksonian.
Attn 3:02. He is right at 70 years old.
@3:02- if I were guessing, perp will get 5 years. There was a disposal company in Shreveport and that is what the operator got in addition to a multi million dollar fine.
No doubt tip of an iceberg that's existed since time immemorial. The same as county folks running their field line directly from the shitter to a creek, stream or river.
Usually Kingfish's stories cite something about 'could serve up to...'. Wonder why this one didn't.
My sympathies to all those twelve-toed folks south of Jacktown who get their drinking water from the Pearl.
Why isn't the "Rankin county company" identified?
It's easy to make the burbs look good when you don't deal with any of your responsibilities. Have untreated waste? Just take it to Jackson and pour it down the drain. Have homeless or mentally ill? Take them to Jackson and drop them off at the bus station.
Problems solved! Plus you get to feel superior to Jackson as they try to fix these issues that "don't exist" in the burbs.
This company is located about 100 yards from Lynch creek which empties in the pearl river about a Half mile farther away.
Time for Brother Hurst to lien up some property in Palisades.
3:15, please look at the first word of the headline.
Was this as bad as Jackson running their sewer water in the river?
Maybe the waste will cancel each other out. This man will probably not dump any more in the sewer system but you can bet your ass Jackson will continue dumping their shit in the river.
@3:21 - Your reading comprehension skills, especially as it relates to paragraph 18 and 19 of Hurst's charging instrument, leave much to be desired. Those pieces of $h!+ knew exactly where their lackey was dumping their dangerous material.
I read the article, then I read the comments. How many of you commenting read more than the headline? The COMPANY that first dumped into the sewer system got in trouble for doing so. Then, illegally, they hired someone to dump it for them, knowing full well it was being dumped into the same sewer system. It wasn't a PUBLIC entity in Rankin County, it was a private COMPANY who did so. Several of the comments act like it was Rankin (the County) somehow involved in this.
And @3:46, Rebel's proximity to the creek or Pearl River has no bearing on anything. They were dumping it into the sewer, which, even in Jackson, doesn't (or at least isn't designed to) dump directly into the river.
"No doubt tip of an iceberg that's existed since time immemorial. The same as county folks running their field line directly from the shitter to a creek, stream or river."
This happens in rural areas of the state much more than city folks think...
Just the good ol' boys
Never meanin' no harm
Beats all you never saw
Been in trouble with the law
Since the day they was born
Makin' their way
The only way they know how
That's just a little bit more
Than the law will allow
I wonder did the waste smell as bad as whatever gas is leaching out of the landfill just south east of highway 49 below the trace.
Can't see it from my McMansion here at Lake Caroline. It sucks to live down-river from Jackson.
We can only hope that something positive emerges from this. Something like a group of crime fighting, pizza loving, mutant ninja turtles that might put a stop to the murder and mayhem that takes place daily on the streets of Jackson.
I just realized that whenever my drain is clogged I go to Ace and buy acid to pour down the drain. These guys probably did the city a favor.
A Rankin company dumping poison into the Pearl River on the Hinds County side. Sounds about right.
156 and for that matter 216.
No.
This is sanitary waste. Drinking water is an entirely different system.
Basics here - hold on. Drinking water is taken out of the res for treatment at a WATER treatment plant located at the spillway. More water is taken out of the Pearl (basically at Mayes Lake behind LeFluers Park) and treated at the WATER treatment plant at waterworks curve. Water is sent through WATER pipes to your house.
After you use the water - washing dishes, toilet, shower, etc it leaves your house through SEWER pipes, located in the ground deeper than the WATER pipes. The sewerage goes through the SEWER pipes to the SEWER treatment plant located at Savannah Street, East of I55 (badically at Byram). After the sewerage is treated - or for that matter when it is not treated - it is discharged into the Pearl. Where it goes into the Pearl is miles south of where it is taken out. And, as a final note, the Pearl flows south, not north, so this discharge didn't get to the source of the raw water.
Two different systems. Discharging this industrial waste, battery acid, or whatever had zero effect on Jackson's water problems. But it could have done significant damage to the sewer system including the pipes and the treatment plant.
:7:22 and 7:24- That shit is funny
I thought environmental regulations are for liberals? Who cares about a little pollution?
Founder of Rebel High Velocity, Steve Compton would have never done this. The company was sold after his untimely death saving one of his employees. Steve went down into the sewer line at Northpark after realizing one of his men had succumbed to methane. Steve single handily carried him back up out of the system only to have a heart attack and fall back down to the bottom sacrificing his life to save another. Men like Steve are hard to come by these days and I guess that’ll never change after watching the soyboy ass hat unemployed rioters on television.
A mans man who left us too soon with honor.
DEQ officials and inspectors gave these people way too many passes and slaps on the wrist. Those are the people who should be fired.
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